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WAIFS AND STRAYS 



OF THIS 

FIRST EDITION 

TWO HUNDRED COPIES ONLY 

WERE PRINTED IN 

OCTOBER, 1917 





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** Will " Porter of Greensboro 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

TWELVE STORIES 
By 

Together with a representative 
selection of critical and bio- 
graphical comment v 




Garden City New York 
Douhleday, Page and Company 

191*r 




Copy right y 19 17 » by 
DouBLEDAY, Page & Company 

All rights reserved, including that of 

iranslation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 



COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1905, BY THE PRESS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY McCLURE, PHILLIPS AND COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY AINSLEE'S MAGAZINE COMPANY 

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY BROADWAY MAGAZINE, INC. 



m 19 1917 " 



'GU477622 n^ 

V 



\ 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

For permission to use material in this volume 
acknowledgment is due the Press Publishing Com- 
pany, Everybody's Magazine, Ainslee's Magazine, 
Hampton's Magazine, the Cosmopolitan, the Macmil- 
lan Company, the John Lane Company, Success, the 
Bookman, the George Doran Company, Dodd, Mead 
and Company, Current Literature, and the North Amer- 
ican Review. 



CONTENTS 

PART ONE 

TWELVE STORIES 

i PAGE 

The Red Roses of Tonia ..... 3 

Round the Circle ........ 17 

The Rubber Plant's Story . .... 25 

Out of Nazareth .32 

Confessions of a Humourist .... 52 

The Sparrows in Madison Square . . QQ 

Hearts and Hands 72 

The Cactus 76 

The Detective Detector 82 

The Dog and the Playlet 90 

A Little Talk About Mobs ..... 97 

The Snow IMan 102 

PART TWO 

CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL COMMENT 

Little Pictures of O. Henry . . . .129 
By Arthur W, Page 

Vll 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Knight in Disguise 170 

By Nicholas Vachel Lindsay 

The x\mazing Genius of O. Henry . . . 172 

By Stephen Leacock 

O. Henry: an English View 196 

By A. St. John Adcoch 

The Misadventures in Musical Comedy of 
O. Henry and Franklin P. Adams . . 205 

O. Henry in His Own Bagdad .... 222 
By George Jean Nathan 

O. Henry — Apothecary 230 

By Christopher Morley 

O. Henry 231 

By William Lyon Phelps 

About New York with O. Henry . . . 233 
By Arthur B. Maurice 

0. Henhy and New Orleans .... 263 
By Caroline Francis Richardson 

"A Yankee ]\L\upassant " — A Summary of 
the Early Criticism 271 

O. Henry's Short Stories 277 

By Henry James Forman 

The O. Henry Index 281 



Vlll 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

A TRESTLE burned down on the International 
Railroad. The south-bound from San An- 
tonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. 
On that train was Tonia Weaver's Easter hat. 

Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty 
miles in a buckboard from the Espinosa Ranch to 
fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder and hands 
empty except for a cigarette. At the small station. 
Nopal, he had learned of the delayed train and, hav- 
ing no commands to wait, turned his ponies toward the 
ranch again. 

Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of 
Spring, cares any more for the after-church parade on 
Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal outfit of 
subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cac- 
tus, Tex., a mistake has been made. The wives and 
daughters of the ranchmen of the Frio country put 
forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as faith- 
fully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for 
one day, a mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and para- 
dise. And now it was Good Friday, and Tonia 
Weaver's Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert 

3 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

air of an impotent express car, beyond the burned 
trestle. On Saturday noon the Rogers girls, from the 
Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the Anchor- 
O, and Mrs. Bennett and Ida, from Green Valley, 
would convene at the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. 
With their Easter hats and frocks carefully wrapped 
and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation 
would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where 
on the morrow they would array themselves, sub- 
jugate man, do homage to Easter, and cause jealous 
agitation among the lilies of the field. 

Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house 
flicking gloomily with a quirt at a tuft of curly 
mesquite. She displayed a frown and a contume- 
lious lip, and endeavoured to radiate an aura of dis- 
agreeableness and tragedy. 

"I hate railroads," she announced positively. 
"And men. Men pretend to run them. Can you 
give any excuse why a trestle should burn.^ I^a 
Bennett's hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall 
not go one step toward Cactus v/ithout a new hat. 
If I were a man I would get one." 

Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement, 
of their kind. One was Wells Pearson, foreman of 
the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was 
Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from 
the Quintana Valley. Both thought Tonia Weaver 
adorable, especially when she railed at railroads 
and menaced men. Either would have given up his 
epidermis to make for her an Easter hat more cheer- 

4 



THE RED ROSES OP TONIA 

fully than the ostrich gives up his tip or the aigrette 
lays down its life. Neither possessed the ingenuity 
to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency 
against the coming Sabbath. Pearson's deep brown 
face and sunburned light hair gave him the appear- 
ance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth's profound 
and insolvable melancholies. Tonia's plight grieved 
him through and through. Thompson Burrows was 
the more skilled and phable. He hailed from some- 
where in the East originally; and he wore neckties and 
shoes, and was not made dumb by woman's pres- 
ence. 

"The big water-hole on Sandy Creek," said Pear- 
son, scarcely hoping to make a hit, "was filled up by 
that last rain." 

"Oh! Was it?" said Tonia sharply. "Thank you 
for the information. I suppose a new hat is nothing 
to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a woman 
ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a 
change, as you do. If your old water-hole could have 
put out the fire on that trestle you might have some 
reason to talk about it." 

"I am deeply sorry," said Burrows, warned by 
Pearson's fate, "that you failed to receive your hat. 
Miss Weaver — deeply sorry, indeed. If there was 
anything I could do " 

"Don't bother," interrupted Tonia, with sweet 
sarcasm. "If there was anything you could do, 
you'd be doing it, of course. There isn't." 

Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come 

5 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

into her eye. Her frown smoothed away. She had 
an inspiration. 

''There's a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the 
Nueces," she said, "that keeps hats. Eva Rogers 
got hers there. She said it was the latest style. 
They might have some left. But it's twenty-eight 
miles to Lone Elm." 

The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; 
and Tonia almost smiled. The Knights, then, were 
not all turned to dust; nor were their rowels rust. 

"Of course," said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at 
a white gulf cloud sailing across the cerulean dome, 
"nobody could ride to Lone Elm and back by the 
time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon 
I'll have to stay at home this Easter Sunday." 

And then she smiled. 

** Well, Miss Tonia," said Pearson, reaching for his 
hat, as guileful as a sleeping babe. "I reckon I'll 
be trotting along back to Mucho Calor. There's 
some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first 
thing in the morning; and me and Road Runner 
has got to be on hand. It's too bad your hat got 
sidetracked. Maybe they'll get that trestle mended 
yet in time for Easter." 

"I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia," announced 
Burrows, looking at his watch. "I declare, it's 
nearly five o'clock! I must be out at my lambing 
camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes." 

Tonia's suitors seemed to have been smitten with 
a need for haste. They bade her a ceremonious 

6 



THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

farewell, and then shook each other's hands with 
the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the South- 
westerner. 

"Hope I'll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson," said 
Burrows. 

''Same here," said the cowman, with the serious 
face of one whose friend goes upon a whaling voy- 
age. "Be gratified to see you ride over to Mucho 
Calor any time you strike that section of the range." 

Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow- 
pony on the Frio, and let him pitch for a minute, as 
be always did on being moimted, even at the end of 
a hard day's travel. 

"What kind of a hat was that. Miss Tonia," he 
called, "that you ordered from San Antone? I can't 
help but be sorry about that hat." 

"A straw," said Tonia; "the latest shape, of 
course; trimmed with red roses. That's what I like 
— red roses." 

"There's no colour more becoming to your com- 
plexion and hair," said Burrows admiringly. 

"It's what I like," said Tonia. "And of all the 
flowers, give me red roses. Keep all the pinks and 
blues for yourself. But what's the use, when tres- 
tles burn and leave you without anything.^ It'll be 
a dry old Easter for me!" 

Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner 
at a gallop Into chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch 
house. 

As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows's 

7 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

long-legged sorrel struck out down the narrow stretch 
of open prairie to the southwest. 

Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting- 
room. 

*'I'm mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn't get 
your hat," said her mother. 

"Oh, don't worry, mother," said Tonia coolly. 
"I'll have a new hat, all right, in time to-morrow." 

WTien Burrows reached the end of the strip of 
prairie he pulled his sorrel to the right and let him 
pick his way daintily across a sacuista flat through 
which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then 
up a gravelly hill, matted with bush, the horse 
scrambled, and at length emerged, with a snort of 
satisfaction, into a stretch of high, level prairie, grassy 
and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in 
their fresh spring foliage. Always to the right Bur- 
rows bore, until in a little while he struck the old 
Indian trail that followed the Nueces southward, 
and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast, 
through Lone Elm. 

Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. 
As he settled himself in the saddle for a long ride 
he heard the drumming of hoofs, the hollow "thwack" 
of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of 
a Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the 
brush at the right of the trail like a precocious yellow 
chick- from a dark green Easter egg. 

Except in the presence of awing femininity, mel- 

8 



THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

ancholy found no place in Pearson's bosom. In 
Tonia's presence his voice was as soft as a summer 
bullfrog's in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome 
yawp, rabbits, a mile away, ducked their ears, and 
sensitive plants closed their fearful fronds. 

"Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the 
ranch, haven't you, neighbour.'^" asked Pearson, as 
Road Runner fell in at the sorrel's side. 

"Twenty-eight miles," said Burrows, looking a 
little grim. Pearson's laugh woke an owl one hour 
too early in his water-elm on the river bank, haK a 
mile away. 

"All right for you, sheepman. I like an open 
game, myself. We're two locoed he-milliners hat- 
hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr, to 
mind your corrals. We've got an even start; and 
the one that gets the headgear will stand some higher 
at the Espinosa." 

"You've got a good pony," said Burrows, eyeing 
Road Runner's barrel-like body and tapering legs 
that moved as regularly as the piston-rod of an en- 
gine. "It's a race, of course; but you're too much of 
a horseman to whoop it up this soon. Say we travel 
together till we get to the home stretch." 

"I'm your company," agreed Pearson, "and I ad- 
mire your sense. If there's hats at Lone Elm, one 
of 'em shall set on Miss Tonia's brow to-morrow, 
and you won't be at the crowning. I ain't bragging. 
Burr, but that sorrel of yours is weak in the fore-legs." 

"My horse against yours," offered Burrows, "that 

9 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Miss Tonia wears the hat I take her to Cactus to- 



morrow." 



"I'll take you up," shouted Pearson. "But, oh, it's 
just like horse-stealing for me ! I can use that sorrel 
for a lady's animal when — when somebody comes 
over to Mucho Calor, and " 

Burrows's dark face glowered so suddenly that the 
cowman broke off his sentence. But Pearson could 
never feel any pressure for long. 

"What's all this Easter business about, Burr.^^" he 
asked cheerfully. "Why do the women folks have 
to have new hats by the almanac or bust all cinches 
trying to get 'em?" 

"It's a seasonable statute out of the testaments," 
explained Burrows. "It's ordered by the Pope or 
somebody. And it has something to do with the 
Zodiac. I don't know exactly, but I think it was 
invented by the Egyptians." 

"It's an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put 
their brand on it," said Pearson; "or else Tonia 
wouldn't have anything to do with it. And they 
pull it oflp at church, too. Suppose there ain't but 
one hat in the Lone Elm store, Burr!" 

"Then," said Burrows, darkly, "the best man of 
us'll take it back to the Espinosa." 

"Oh, man!" cried Pearson, throwing his hat high 
and catching it again, "there's nothing like you 
come off the sheep ranges before. You talk good 
and collateral to the occasion. And if there's more 
than one?" 

10 



THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

"Then," said Burrows, "we'll pick our choice; and 
one of us'U get back first with his and the other 
won't." 

"There never was two souls," proclaimed Pearson 
to the stars, "that beat more like one heart than 
yourn and mine. Me and you might be riding on a 
unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind." 

At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone 
Elm. The half a hundred houses of the village were 
dark. On its only street the big wooden store stood 
barred and shuttered. 

In a few moments the horses were fastened and 
Pearson was pounding cheerfully on the door of old 
Sutton, the storekeeper. 

The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny 
of a solid window shutter, followed by a short inquiry. 

"Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Bur- 
rows, of Green Valley," was the response. " We want 
to buy some goods in the store. Sorry to wake you 
up, but we must have 'em. Come on out. Uncle 
Tommy, and get a move on you." 

Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got 
him behind his counter with a kerosene lamp lit, and 
told him of their dire need. 

Easter hats?" said Uncle Tommy sleepily. 
Why, yes, I believe I have got just a couple left. I 
only ordered a dozen this spring. I'll show 'em to 

you." 

Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half 
asleep or awake. In dusty pasteboard boxes under 

11 



(6 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

the counter he had two left-over spring hats. But, 
alas ! for his commercial probity on that early Satur- 
day noon — they were hats of two springs ago, and a 
woman's eye would have detected the fraud at half a 
glance. But to the unintelligent gaze of the cow- 
puncher and the sheepman they seemed fresh from the 
mint of contemporaneous April. 

The hats were of a variety once known as "cart- 
w^heels." They were of stiff straw, coloured red, and 
flat brimmed. Both were exactly alike, and trimmed 
lavishly around their crowns with full blown, im- 
maculate, artificial white roses. 

**That all you got. Uncle Tommy?'' said Pearson. 
*' All right. Not much choice here, Burr. Take your 
pick." 

** They're the latest styles," lied Uncle Tommy. 
'* You'd see 'em on Fifth Avenue, if you was in New 
York." 

Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two 
yards of dark calico for a protection. One Pearson 
tied carefully to his calfskin saddle-thongs; and 
the other became part of Road Runner's burden. 
They shouted thanks and farewells to Uncle Tommy, 
and cantered back into the night on the home stretch. 

The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They 
rode more slowly on their way back. The few words 
they spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows had a Win- 
chester under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. 
Pearson had a six-shooter belted around him. Thus 
men rode in the Frio country. 



THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

At half -past seven in the morning they rode to the 
top of a hill and saw the Espinosa Ranch, a white 
spot under a dark patch of live-oaks, five miles 
away. 

The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose 
in the saddle. He knew what Road Runner could 
do. The sorrel was lathered, and stumbling fre- 
quently. Road Runner was pegging away like a 
donkey engine. 

Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed, 
"Good-bye, Burr," he cried, with a wave of his hand. 
*'It's a race now. We're on the home stretch/' 

He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned 
toward the Espinosa. Road Runner struck into a 
gallop, with tossing head and snorting nostrils, as 
if he were fresh from a month in pasture. 

Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the unmis- 
takable sound of a Winchester lever throwing a 
cartridge into the barrel. He dropped flat along his 
horse's back before the crack of the rifle reached his 
ears. 

It is possible that Burrows intended only to dis- 
able the horse — ^he was a good enough shot to do 
that without endangering his rider. But as Pear- 
son stooped the ball went through his shoulder and 
then through Road Runner's neck. The horse fell 
and the cowman pitched over his head into the hardl 
road, and neither of them tried to move. 

Burrows rode on without stopping. 

In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took 

13 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

inventory. He managed to get to his feet and stag- 
gered back to where Road Runner was lying. 

Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to 
be comfortable. Pearson examined him and found 
that the bullet had "creased" him. He had been 
knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. 
But he was tired, and he lay there on Miss Tonia's 
hat and ate leaves from a mesquite branch that 
obligingly hung over the road. 

Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, 
loosed from the saddle-thongs, lay there in its calico 
wrappings, a shapeless thing from its sojourn beneath 
the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson 
fainted and fell headlong upon the poor hat again, 
crumpling it under his wounded shoulders. 

It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour 
he revived — long enough for a woman to have fainted 
twice and tried ice-cream for a restorer. He got up 
carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with 
the near-by grass. He tied the unfortunate hat to 
the saddle again, and managed to get himself there, 
too, after many failures. 

At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in 
front of the Espinosa Ranch. The Rogers girls were 
there in their new buckboard, and the Anchor-0 
outfit, and the Green Valley folks — mostly women. 
And each and every one wore her new Easter hat, 
even upon the lonely prairies, for they greatly desired 
to shine forth and do honour to the coming festival. 

At the gate stood Tonia, with undisguised tears 

14 



THE RED ROSES OF TONIA 

upon her cheeks. In her hand she held Burrows's 
Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses, hated 
by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling 
her, with the ecstatic joy of true friends, that cart- 
wheels could not be worn, being three seasons passed 
into oblivion. 

"Put on your old hat and come, Tonia," they urged. 

"For Easter Sunday.^" she answered. "I'll die 
first." And wept again. 

The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and 
twisted into the style of spring's latest proclama- 
tion. 

A strange being rode out of the brush among 
them, and there sat his horse languidly. He was, 
stained and disfigured with the green of grass and the 
limestone of rocky roads. 

"Hallo, Pearson," said Daddy Weaver. "Look 
like you've been breaking a mustang. What's that 
you've got tied to your saddle — a pig in a poke.^" 

"Oh, come on, Tonia, if you're going," said Betty 
Rogers. "We mustn't wait any longer. We've 
saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never mind 
the hat. That lovely muslin you've got on looks 
sweet enough with any old hat." 

Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on 
his saddle. Tonia looked at him with a sudden hope. 
Pearson was a man who created hope. He got the 
thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers 
tore at the strings. 

"Best I could do," said Pearson slowly. "What 

15 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Road Runner and me done to it will be about all it 
needs." 

**0h, oh! it's just the right shape," shrieked Tonia. 
"And red roses! Wait till I try it on!" 

She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, 
radiating, blossomed. 

**0h, don't red become her.'^" chanted the girls in 
recitative. "Hurry up, Tonia!" 

Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road 
Runner. 

"Thank you, thank you. Wells," she said happily. 
"It's just what I wanted. Won't you come over to 
Cactus to-morrow and go to church with me.^^" 

"If I can," said Pearson. He was looking curi- 
ously at her hat, and then he grinned weakly. 

Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The 
vehicles sped away for Cactus. 

"WTiat have you been doing, Pearson?" asked 
Daddy Weaver. "You ain't looking so well as com- 
mon." 

"Me?" said Pearson. "I've been painting flowers. 
Them roses was white when I left Lone Elm. Help 
me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven't got any more 
paint to spare." 



16 



ROUND THE CIRCLE* 

FIND yo' shirt all right, Sam?" asked Mrs. 
Webber, from her chair under the live-oak, 
where she was comfortably seated with a 
paper-back volume for company. 

"It balances perfeckly, Marthy," answered Sam, 
with a suspicious pleasantness in his tone. "At 
first I was about ter be a little reckless and kick 
'cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver 
that the button holes is all busted out, why, I wouldn't 
go so fur as to say the buttons is any loss to speak of." 

"Oh, well," said his wife carelessly, "put on your 
necktie — ^that'll keep it together." 

Sam Webber's sheep ranch was situated in the 
loneliest part of the country between the Nueces and 
the Frio. The ranch house — a two-room box struc- 
ture — was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the 
midst of a wilderness of high chaparral. In front of 
it was a small clearing where stood the sheep pens, 
shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet back 
of it began the thorny jungle. 

Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch 
to see about buying some more improved merino 
rams. At length he came out, ready for his ride. 

'This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of the theme afterward 
developed with a surer hand in The Pendulum. 

17 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

This being a business trip of some importance, and 
the Chapman ranch being almost a small town in 
population and size, Sam had decided to ''dress up" 
accordingly. The result was that he had transformed 
himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into 
something much less pleasing to the sight. The tight 
white collar awkwardly constricted his muscular, 
mahogany-coloured neck. The buttonless shirt 
bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. 
The suit of ''ready-made" effectually concealed the 
fine lines of his straight, athletic figure. His berry^- 
brown face was set to the melancholy dignity befitting 
a prisoner of state. He gave Randy, his three-year- 
old son, a pat on the head, and hurried out to where 
Mexico, his favourite saddle horse, was standing. 

Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her 
place in, the book with her finger, and turned her 
head, smiling mischievously as she noted the havoc 
Sam had wrought with his appearance in trying to 
"fix up." 

"Well, ef I must say it, Sam," she drawled, "you 
look jest like one of them hayseeds in the picture 
papers, 'stead of a free and independent sheepman 
of ther State o' Texas." 

Sam climbed awkwardlv into the saddle. 

"You're the one ought to be 'shamed to say so," 
he replied hotly. "'Stead of 'tendin' to a man's 
clothes you're al'ays settin' around a'-readin them 
billy-by-dam yaller-back novils." 

"Oh, shet up and ride along," said Mrs. Webber, 

18 



ROUND THE CIRCLE 

with a little jerk at the handles of her chair; "you 
al'ays fussin' 'bout my readin'. I do a-plenty; and 
I'll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like 
a varmint, never seein' nor hearin' nothin', and what 
other 'musement kin I have? Not in listenin' to 
you talk, for it's complain, complain, one day after 
another. Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace." 

Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and 
"shoved" down the wagon trail that connected his 
ranch with the old, open Government road. It was 
eight o'clock, and already beginning to be very warm. 
He should have started three hours earlier. Chap- 
man ranch was only eighteen miles away, but there 
was a road for only three miles of the distance. He 
had ridden over there once with one of the Half- 
Moon cowpunchers, and he had the direction well 
defined in his mind. 

Sam turned off the old Government road at the 
split mesquite, and struck down the arroyo of the 
Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of smiling 
valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly 
mesquite grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles 
quickly with his long, easy lope. Again, upon reach- 
ing Wild Duck Waterhole, must he abandon well- 
defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little 
hill, pebble-covered, upon which grew only the 
tenacious and thorny prickly pear and chaparral. At 
the summit of this he paused to take his last general 
view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind 
through brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and 

19 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

mesquite, for the most part seeing scarcely farther 
than twenty yards in any direction, choosing his way 
by the prairie-dweller's instinct, guided only by an 
occasional glimpse of a far-distant hilltop, a peculiarly 
shaped knot of trees, or the position of the sun. 

Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the 
great pear flat that lies between the Quintanilla and 
the Piedra. 

In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. 
Then came the usual confusion of mind and the 
hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to 
redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the 
tortuous labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment 
his master's sureness of the route had failed his horse 
had divined the fact. There were no hills now that 
they could climb to obtain a view of the country. 
They came upon a few, but so dense and interlaced 
was the brush that scarcely could a rabbit penetrate 
the mass. They were in the great, lonely thicket of 
the Frio bottoms. 

It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheep- 
man to be lost for a day or a night. The thing often 
happened. It was merely a matter of missing a meal 
or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blan- 
kets on a soft mattress of mesquite grass. But in 
Sam's case it was different. He had never been away 
from his ranch at night. Marthy was afraid of the 
countrj^ — afraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, 
even of sheep. So he had never left her alone. 

It must have been about four in the afternoon when 

20 



ROUND THE CIRCLE 

Sam's conscience awoke. He was limp and drenched, 
rather from anxiety than the heat or fatigue. Until 
now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to 
the Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must 
have crossed it at some dim part of it and ridden 
beyond. If so he was now something like fifty miles 
from home. If he could strike a ranch — a camp — 
any place where he could get a fresh horse and inquire 
the road, he would ride all night to get back to Marthy 
and the kid. 

So, I have hinted, Sam was seized by remorse. 
There was a big lump in his throat as he thought of 
the cross words he had spoken to his wife. Surely it 
was hard enough for her to live in that horrible coun- 
try without having to bear the burden of his abuse. 
He cursed himself grimly, and felt a sudden flush of 
shame that overglowed the summer heat as he re- 
membered the many times he had flouted and railed 
at her because she had a liking for reading fic- 
tion. 

^'Ther only so'ce ov amusement ther po' gal's 
got," said Sam aloud, with a sob, which unaccus- 
tomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. "A-livin' 
with a sore-headed kiote like me — a low-down skunk 
that ought to be licked to death with a saddle cinch — 
a-cookin' and a-washin' and a-livin' on mutton and 
beans — and me abusin' her fur takin' a squint or two 
in a little book!" 

He thought of Marthy as she had been when he 
first met her in Dogtown — smart, pretty, and saucy 

21 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

— before the sun had turned the roses in her cheeks 
brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her 
ambitions. 

"Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little 
gal," muttered Sam, **or fails in the love and affection 
that's comin' to her in the deal, I hopes a wildcat '11 
t'ar me to pieces." 

He knew what he would do. He would write to 
Garcia & Jones, his San Antonio merchants where he 
bought his supplies and sold his wool, and have them 
send down a big box of novels and reading matter for 
Marthy. Things were going to Tdc different. He 
wondered whether a little piano could be placed in 
one of the rooms of the ranch house without the 
family having to move out of doors. 

In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was 
the thought that Marthy and Randy would have to 
pass that night alone. In spite of their bickerings, 
when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her 
fears of the country, and rest her head upon Sam's 
strong arm w4th a sigh of peaceful content and de- 
pendence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam 
thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy 
cougars that sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattle- 
snakes, centipedes, and a dozen possible dangers. 
Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would 
cry, and call for "dada" to come. 

Still the interminable succession of stretches of 
brush, cactus, and mesquite. Hollow after hollow, 
slope after slope — all exactly alike — all familiar by 

22 



ROUND THE CIRCLE 

constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If 
he could only arrive somewhere. 

The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. 
A straightforward man is more an artificial product 
than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow travel 
in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their 
footprints have attested. Also, travellers in philos- 
ophy and other mental processes frequently wind up 
at their starting-point. 

It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition 
and good resolves that Mexico, with a heavy sigh, 
subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a slow, com- 
placent walk. They were winding up an easy slope 
covered with brush ten or twelve feet high. 

"I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't 
do. I know you're plumb tired out, but we got ter 
git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo' houses in 
the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his 
heels. 

Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: 
"What's the use of that, now we're so near?" He 
quickened his gait into a languid trot. Rounding 
a great clump of black chaparral, he stopped short. 
Sam dropped the bridle reins and sat, looking into 
the back door of his own house, not ten yards away. 

Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking- 
chair before the door in the shade of the house, with 
her feet resting luxuriously upon the steps. Randy, 
who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground, 
looked up for a moment at his father and went on 

23 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

spinning the rowels and singing a little song. Marthy 
turned her head lazily against the back of the chair 
and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes. 
She held a book in her lap with her finger holding the 
place. 

Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming 
out of a dream, and slowly dismounted. He mois- 
tened his dry lips. 

**I see you are still a-settin'," he said, **a-readin' 
of them billy-by-dam yaller-back novils." 

Sam had travelled round the circle and was himself 
again. 



24 



THE RUBBER PLANT'S STORY 

WE RUBBER plants form the connecting link 
between the vegetable kingdom and the 
decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a 
Third Avenue theatre. I haven't looked up our fam- 
ily tree, but I believe we were raised by grafting a 
gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote stalk of 
asparagus. You take a white bulldog with a Bourke 
Cockran air of independence about him and a rubber 
plant and there you have the fauna and flora of a 
flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber 
plant is to the dweller in flats and furnished rooms. 
W^e get moved from one place to another so quickly 
that the only way we can get our picture taken 
is with a kinetoscope. We are the vagrant vine and 
the flitting fig tree. You know the proverb : " WTiere 
the rubber plant sits in the window the moving van 
draws up to the door." 

We are the city equivalent to the woodbine and 
the honeysuckle. No other vegetable except the 
Pittsburg stogie can withstand as much handling 
as we can. When the family to which we belong 
moves into a flat they set us in the front window 
and we become lares and penates, fly-paper and the 
peripatetic emblem of "Home Sweet Home." We 
aren't as green as we look. I guess we are about 

25 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

what you would call the soubrettes of the conserva- 
tory. You try sitting in the front window of a $40 
flat in Manhattan and looking out into the street 
all day, and back into the flat at night, and see 
whether you get wise or not — hey? Talk about the 
tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of 
Eden — say! suppose there had been a rubber plant 
there when Eve — but I was going to tell you a story. 

The first thing I can remember I had only three 
leaves and belonged to a member of the pony ballet. 
I was kept in a sunny window, and was generally 
watered with seltzer and lemon. I had plenty of 
fun in those days. I got cross-eyed trying to watch 
the numbers of the automobiles in the street and 
the dates on the labels inside at the same time. 

Well, then the angel that was moulting for the 
musical comedy lost his last feather and the com- 
pany broke up. The ponies trotted away and I was 
left in the window ownerless. The janitor gave me 
to a refined comedy team on the eighth floor, and in 
six weeks I had been set in the window of five dif- 
ferent flats. I took on experience and put out two 
more leaves. 

Miss Carruthers, of the refined comedy team — did 
you ever see her cross both feet back of her neck.^ — 
gave me to a friend of hers who had made an un- 
fortunate marriage with a man in a store. Conse- 
quently I was placed in the window of a furnished 
room, rent in advance, water two flights up, gas 
extra after ten o'clock at night. Two of my leaves 

26 



THE RUBBER PLANT'S STORY 

withered off here. Also, I was moved from one room 
to another so many times that I got to liking the 
odour of the pipes the expressmen smoked. 

I don't think I ever had so dull a time as I did 
with this lady. There was never anything amusing 
going on inside — she was devoted to her husband, 
and, besides leaning out the window and flirting 
with the icenaan, she never did a thing toward 
breaking the monotony. 

When the couple broke up they left me with the 
rest of their goods at a second-hand store. I was 
put out in front for sale along with the jobbiest lot 
you ever heard of being lumped into one bargain. 
Think of this little cornucopia of wonders, all for 
$1.89: Henry James's works, six talking machine 
records, one pair of tennis shoes, two bottles of 
horse radish, and a rubber plant — that was me ! 

One afternoon a girl came along and stopped to 
look at me. She had dark hair and eyes, and she 
looked slim, and sad around the mouth. 

'*0h, oh!" she says to herself. ''I never thought 
to see one up here." 

She pulls out a little purse about as thick as one 
of my leaves and fingers over some small silver in 
it. Old Koen, always on the lookout, is ready, rub- 
bing his hands. This girl proceeds to turn down Mr. 
James and the other commodities. Rubber plants 
or nothing is the burden of her song. And at last 
Koen and she come together at 39 cents, and away 
she goes with me in her arms. 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

She was a nice girl, but not my style. Too quiet 
and sober looking. Thinks I to myself: "I'll just 
about land on the fire-escape of a tenement, six 
stories up. And I'll spend the next six months look- 
ing at clothes on the line." 

But she carried me to a nice little room only three 
flights up in quite a decent street. And she put me 
in the window, of course. And then she went to 
work and cooked dinner for herself. And what do you 
suppose she had.^ Bread and tea and a little dab of 
jam ! Nothing else. Not a single lobster, nor so much 
as one bottle of champagne. The Carruthers comedy 
team had both every evening, except now and then 
when they took a notion for pig's knuckle and kraut. 

After she had finished her dinner my new owner 
came to the window and leaned down close to my 
leaves and cried softly to herself for a while. It 
made me feel funny. I never knew anybody to cry 
that way over a rubber plant before. Of course, I've 
seen a few of 'em turn on the tears for what they 
could get out of it, but she seemed to be crying just 
for the pure enjoyment of it. She touched my leaves 
like she loved 'em, and she bent down her head and 
kissed each one of 'em. I guess I'm about the 
toughest specimen of a peripatetic orchid on earth, 
but I tell you it made me feel sort of queer. Home 
never was like that to me before. Generally I used 
to get chewed by poodles and have shirt-waists hung 
on me to dry, and get watered with coflPee grounds 
and peroxide of hydrogen. 

28 



THE RUBBER PLANT'S STORY 

This girl had a piano in the room, and she used 
to disturb it with both hands while she made noises 
with her mouth for hours at a time. I suppose she 
was practising vocal music. 

One day she seemed very much excited and kept 
looking at the clock. At eleven somebody knocked 
and she let in a stout, dark man with towsled black 
hair. He sat down at once at the piano and played 
while she sang for him. When she finished she laid 
one hand on her bosom and looked at him. He shook 
his head, and she leaned against the piano. 

"Two years already," she said, speaking slowly — 
"do you think in two more — or even longer?" 

The man shook his head again. "You waste your 
time," he said, roughly I thought. "The voice is 
not there." And then he looked at her in a peculiar 
way. "But the voice is not everything," he went on. 
"You have looks. I can place you, as I told you 
if " 

The girl pointed to the door without saying any- 
thing, and the dark man left the room. And then 
she came over and cried around me again. It's a 
good thing I had enough rubber in me to be water- 
proof. 

About that time somebody else knocked at the 
door. "Thank goodness," I said to myself. "Here's 
a chance to get the water-works turned oflE. I hope 
it's somebody that's game enough to stand a bird 
and a bottle to liven things up a little. Tell you 
the truth, this little girl made me tired. A rubber 

29 



WAIFS AND STRAYS ' 

plant likes to see a little sport now and then. I 
don't suppose there's another green thing in New 
York that sees as much of gay life unless it's the 
chartreuse or the sprigs of parsley around the 
dish." 

When the girl opens the door in steps a young 
chap in a travelling cap and picks her up in his 
arms, and she sings out **0h, Dick!" and stays there 
long enough to — well, you've been a rubber plant, 
too, sometimes, I suppose. 

"Good thing!" says I to myself. "This is livelier 
than scales and weeping. Now there'll be something 
doing." 

"You've got to go back with me," says the young 
man. "I've come two thousand miles for you. 
Aren't you tired of it yet, Bess? You've kept all 
of us waiting so long; Haven't you found out yet 
what is best?" 

"The bubble burst only to-day," says the girl. 
"Come here, Dick, and see what I found the other 
day on the sidewalk for sale." She brings him by 
the hand and exhibits yours truly. "How one ever 
got away up here who can tell? I bought it with 
almost the last money I had." 

He looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off 
her for more than a second. 

"Do you remember the night, Bess," he said, 
"when we stood under one of those on the bank of 
the bayou and what you told me then?" 

"Geewillikins!" I said to myseK. "Both of them 

30 



THE RUBBER PLANT'S STORY 

stand under a rubber plant! Seems to me they are 
stretching matters somewhat." 

"Do I not," says she, looking up at him and sneak- 
ing close to his vest, "and now I say it again, and 
it is to last forever. Look, Dick, at its leaves, how 
wet they are. Those are my tears, and it was think- 
ing of you that made them fall." 

"The dear old magnolias!" says the young man, 
pinching one of my leaves. "I love them all." 

Magnolia! Well, wouldn't that — say! those inno- 
cents thought I was a magnolia! What the — ^well, 
wasn't that tough on a genuine little old New York 
rubber plant? 



31 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

OKOCHEE, in Georgia, had a boom, and J. 
Pinkney Bloom came out of it with a " wad." 
Okochee came out of it with a half-milHon- 
dollar debt, a two and a half per cent, city property 
tax, and a city council that showed a propensity for 
travelling the back streets of the town. These things 
came about through a fatal resemblance of the river 
Cooloosa to the Hudson, as set forth and expounded 
by a Northern tourist. Okochee felt that New York 
should not be allowed to consider itself the only al- 
ligator in the swamp, so to speak. And then that 
harmless, but persistent, individual so numerous in 
the South — the man who is always clamouring for 
more cotton mills, and is ready to take a dollar's 
worth of stock, provided he can borrow the dollar — 
that man added his deadly work to the tourist's 
innocent praise, and Okochee fell. 

The Cooloosa River winds through a range of small 
mountains, passes Okochee, and then blends its waters 
trippingly, as fall the mellifluous Indian syllables 
with the Chattahoochee. 

Okochee rose, as it were, from its simny seat on the 
post-office stoop, hitched up its suspender, and threw 
a granite dam two hundred and forty feet long and 
sixty feet high across the Cooloosa one mile above the 

32 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

town. Thereupon, a dimpling, sparkling lake backed 
up twenty miles among the little mountains. Thus 
in the great game of municipal rivalry did Okochee 
match that famous drawing card, the Hudson. It was 
conceded that nowhere could the Palisades be judged 
superior in the way of scenery and grandeur. Fol- 
lowing the picture card was played the ace of com- 
mercial importance. Fourteen thousand horsepower 
would this dam furnish. Cotton mills, factories, and 
manufacturing plants would rise up as the green corn 
after a shower. The spindle and the fly-wheel and 
turbine would sing the shrewd glory of Okochee. 
Along the picturesque heights above the lake would 
rise in beauty the costly villas and the splendid sum- 
mer residences of capital. The naphtha launch of 
the millionaire would spit among the romantic coves; 
the verdured hills would take formal shapes of ter- 
race, lawn, and park. Money would be spent like 
water in Okochee, and water would be turned into 
money. 

The fate of the good town is quickly told. Capital 
decided not to invest. Of all the great things prom- 
ised, the scenery alone came to fulfilment. The 
wooded peaks, the impressive promontories of solemn 
granite, the beautiful green slants of bank and ravine 
did all they could to reconcile Okochee to the delin- 
quency of miserly gold. The sunsets gilded the 
dreamy draws and coves with a minting that should 
charm away heart-burning. Okochee, true to the 
instinct of its blood and clime, was lulled by the spell. 

33 



AVAIFS AND STRAYS 

It climbed out of the arena, loosed its suspender, sat 
down again on the post-office stoop, and took a chew. 
It consoled itself by drawling sarcasms at the city 
council which was not to blame, causing the fathers, 
as has been said, to seek back streets and figure per- 
spiringly on the sinking fund and the appropriation 
for interest due. 

The youth of Okochee — they who were to carry 
into the rosy future the burden of the debt — accepted 
failure with youth's uncalculating joy. For, here 
was sport, aquatic and nautical, added to the meagre 
round of life's pleasures. In yachting caps and flow- 
ing neckties they pervaded the lake to its limits. 
Girls wore silk waists embroidered with anchors in 
blue and pink. The trousers of the young men 
widened at the bottom, and their hands were proudly 
calloused by the oft-plied oar. Fishermen were under 
the spell of a deep and tolerant joy. Sailboats and 
rowboats furrowed the lenient waves, popcorn and 
ice-cream booths sprang up about the little wooden 
pier. Two small excursion steamboats were built, 
and plied the delectable waters. Okochee philo- 
sophically gave up the hope of eating turtle soup 
with a gold spoon, and settled back, not ill content, 
to its regular diet of lotus and fried hominy. And 
out of this slow wreck of great expectations rose up 
J. Pinkney Bloom with his *' wad " and his prosperous, 
cheery smile. 

Needless to say J. Pinkney was no product of 
Georgia soil. He came out of that flushed and 

34 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

capable region known as the "North." He called 
himself a *' promoter"; his enemies had spoken of 
him as a "grafter"; Okochee took a middle course, 
and held him to be no better nor no worse than a 
"Yank." 

Far up the lake — eighteen miles above the town — 
the eye of this cheerful camp-follower of booms had 
spied out a graft. He purchased there a precipitous 
tract of five hundred acres at forty-five cents per acre; 
and this he laid out and subdivided as the city of 
Skyland — the Queen City of the Switzerland of the 
South. Streets and avenues were surveyed; parks 
designed; corners of central squares reserved for the 
"proposed" opera house, board of trade, lyceum, 
market, public schools, and "Exposition Hall." The 
price of lots ranged from five to five hundred dollars. 
Positively, no lot would be priced higher than five 
hundred dollars. 

While the boom was growing in Okochee, J. Pink- 
ney's circulars, maps, and prospectuses were flying 
through the mails to every part of the country. In- 
vestors sent in their money by post, and the Skyland 
Real Estate Company (J. Pinkney Bloom) returned 
to each a deed, duly placed on record, to the best lot, 
at the price, on hand that day. All this time the 
catamount screeched upon the reserved lot of the 
Skyland Board of Trade, the opossum swung by his 
tail over the site of the exposition hall, and the owl 
hooted a melancholy recitative to his audience of 
young squirrels in opera house square. Later, when 

35 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

the money was coming in fast, J. Pinkney caused to 
be erected in the coming city half a dozen cheap box 
houses, and persuaded a contingent of indigent 
natives to occupy them, thereby assuming the role of 
"population" in subsequent prospectuses, which be- 
came, accordingly, more seductive and remunera- 
tive. 

So, when the dream faded and Okochee dropped 
back to digging bait and nursing its two and a half 
per cent, tax, J. Pinkney Bloom (unloving of checks 
and drafts and the cold interrogatories of bankers) 
strapped about his fifty-two-inch waist a soft leather 
belt containing eight thousand dollars in big bills, 
and said that all was very good. 

One last trip he was making to Skyland before 
departing to other salad fields. Skyland was a 
regular post-office, and the steamboat, Dixie Belle, 
under contract, delivered the mail bag (generally 
empty) twice a week. There was a little business 
there to be settled — the postmaster was to be paid off 
for his light but lonely services, and the "inhabitants" 
had to be furnished with another month's homely 
rations, as per agreement. And then Skyland would 
know J. Pinkney Bloom no more. The owners of 
these precipitous, barren, useless lots might come 
and view the scene of their invested credulity, or 
they might leave them to their fit tenants, the wild 
hog and the browsing deer. The work of the Sky- 
land Real Estate Company was finished. 

The little steamboat Dixie Belle was about to shove 

36 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

off on her regular up-the-lake trip, when a rickety 
hired carriage rattled up to the pier, and a tall, 
elderly gentleman, in black, stepped out, signalling 
courteously but vivaciously for the boat to wait. 
Time was of the least importance in the schedule of 
the Dixie Belle; Captain MacFarland gave the order, 
and the boat received its ultimate two passengers. 
For, upon the arm of the tall, elderly gentleman, 
as he crossed the gangway, was a little elderly lady, 
with a gray curl depending quaintly forward of her 
left ear. 

Captain MacFarland was at the wheel; therefore 
it seemed to J. Pinkney Bloom, who was the only 
other passenger, that it should be his to play the 
part of host to the boat's new guests, who were, 
doubtless, on a scenery-viewing expedition. He 
stepped forward, with that translucent, child-candid 
smile upon his fresh, pink countenance, with that air 
of unaffected sincerity that was redeemed from bluff- 
ness only by its exquisite calculation, with that 
promptitude and masterly decision of manner that 
so well suited his calling — with all his stock in trade 
well to the front, he stepped forward to receive 
Colonel and Mrs. Peyton Blaylock. With the grace 
of a grand marshal or a wedding usher, he escorted 
the two passengers to a side of the upper deck, from 
which the scenery was supposed to present itself to 
the observer in increased quantity and quality. There, 
in comfortable steamer chairs, they sat and began 
to piece together the random lines that were to form 

37 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

an intelligent paragraph in the big history of little 
events. 

"Our home, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, removing 
his wide-brimmed, rather shapeless black felt hat, 
"is in Holly Springs — Holly Springs, Georgia. I am 
very proud to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bloom. 
Mrs. Blaylock and myself have just arrived in Oko- 
chee this morning, sir^ on business — business of im- 
portance in connection with the recent rapid march 
of progress in this section of our state." 

The Colonel smoothed back, with a sweeping ges- 
ture, his long, smooth, gray locks. His dark eyes, 
still fiery under the heavy, black brows, seemed in- 
appropriate to the face of a business man. He looked 
rather to be an old courtier handed down from the 
reign of Charles, and reattired in a modern suit of 
fine, but ravelling and seam-worn, broadcloth. 

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Bloom, in his heartiest pros- 
pectus voice, "things have been whizzing around 
Okochee. Biggest industrial revival and waking up 
to natural resources Georgia ever had. Did you hap- 
pen to squeeze in on the ground floor in any of the 
gilt-edged grafts. Colonel.'^" 

"Well, sir," said the Colonel, hesitating in cour- 
teous doubt, "if I understand your question, I may 
say that I took the opportunity to make an invest- 
ment that I believe will prove quite advantageous 
— yes, sir, I believe it will result in both pecuniary 
profit and agreeable occupation." 

"Colonel Blaylock," said the little elderly lady, 

38 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

shaking her gray curl and smiUng indulgent expla- 
nation at J. Pinkney Bloom, *'is so devoted to busi- 
ness. He has such a talent for financiering and mar- 
kets and investments and those kind of things. I 
think myself extremely fortunate in having secured 
him for a partner on life's journey — I am so unversed 
in those formidable but very useful branches of 
learning." 

Colonel Blaylock rose and made a bow — a bow 
that belonged with silk stockings and lace ruffles and 
velvet. 

"Practical aflFairs," he said, with a wave of his 
hand toward the promoter, *'are, if I may use the 
comparison, the garden walks upon which we tread 
through life, viewing upon either side of us the flow- 
ers which brighten that journey. It is my pleasure 
to be able to lay out a walk or two. Mrs. Blaylock, 
sir, is one of those fortunate higher spirits whose 
mission it is to make the flowers grow. Perhaps, 
Mr. Bloom, you have perused the lines of Lorella, the 
Southern poetess. That is the name above which 
Mrs. Blaylock has contributed to the press of the 
South for many years." 

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Bloom, with a sense of 
the loss clearly written upon his frank face, "I'm 
like the Colonel — in the walk-making business my- 
self — and I haven't had time to even take a sniiBF 
at the flowers. Poetry is a line I never dealt in. It 
must be nice, though — quite nice." 

"It is the region," smiled INIrs. Blaylock, "in 

39 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

which my soul dwells. My shawl, Peyton, if you 
please — the breeze comes a little chilly from yon 
verdured hills." 

The Colonel drew from the tail pocket of his coat 
a small shawl of knitted silk and laid it solicitously 
about the shoulders of the lady. Mrs. Blaylock 
sighed contentedly, and turned her expressive eyes — 
still as clear and unworldly as a child's — upon the 
steep slopes that were slowly slipping past. Very 
fair and stately they looked in the clear morning air. 
They seemed to speak in familiar terms to the re- 
sponsive spirit of Lorella. "My native hills!" she 
murmured dreamilv. " See how the foliacje drinks the 
sunlight from the hollows and dells." 

'*Mrs. Blaylock's maiden days," said the Colonel, 
Interpreting her mood to J. Pinkney Bloom, "were 
spent among the mountains of northern Georgia. 
Mountain air and mountain scenery recall to her 
those days. Holly Springs, where we have lived for 
twenty years, is low and flat. I fear that she may 
have suffered in health and spirits by so long a resi- 
dence there. That is one potent reason for the change 
we are making. My dear, can you not recall those 
lines you wrote — entitled, I think, *The Georgia 
Hills' — the poem that was so extensively copied by 
the Southern press and praised so highly by the 
Atlanta critics?" 

Mrs. Blaylock turned a glance of speaking tender- 
ness upon the Colonel, fingered for a moment the sil- 
very curl that drooped upon her bosom, then looked 

40 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

again toward the mountains. Without preliminary 
or affectation or demurral she began, in rather thrill- 
ing and more deeply pitched tones to recite these 
lines: 

"The Georgia hills, the Georgia hills!— 

Oh, heart, why dost thou pine? 
Are not these sheltered lowlands fair 

With mead and bloom and vine? 
Ah! as the slow-paced river here 

Broods on its natal rills 
My spirit drifts, in longing sweet. 

Back to the Georgia hills 

"And through the close-drawn, curtained night 

I steal on sleep's slow wings 
Back to my heart's ease — slopes of pine — 

Where end my wanderings. 
Oh, heaven seems nearer from their tops — 

And farther earthly ills — 
Even in dreams, if I may but 

Dream of my Georgia hills. 

The grass upon their orchard sides 

Is a fine couch to me; 
The common note of each small bird 

Passes all minstrelsy. 
It would not seem so dread a thing 

If, when the Reaper wills, 
He might come there and take my hand 

Up in the Georgia hills." 

"That's great stuff, ma'am," said J. Pinkney 
Bloom, enthusiastically, when the poetess had con- 

41 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

eluded. "I wish I had looked up poetry more than I 
have. I was raised in the pine hills myself." 

*'The mountains ever call to their children," mur- 
mured Mrs. Blaylock. "I feel that life will take on 
the rosy hue of hope again in among these beautiful 
hills. Peyton — a little taste of the currant wine, if 
you will be so good. The journey, though delightful 
in the extreme, slightly fatigues me." 

Colonel Blaylock again visited the depths of his 
prolific coat, and produced a tightly corked, rough, 
black bottle. Mr. Bloom was on his feet in an 
instant. *' Let me bring a glass, ma'am. You come 
along. Colonel — there's a little table we can bring, too. 
Maybe we can scare up some fruit or a cup of tea on 
board. I'll ask Mac." 

Mrs. Blaylock reclined at ease. Few royal ladies 
have held their royal prerogative with the serene 
grace of the petted Southern woman. The Colonel, 
with an air as gallant and assiduous as in the days 
of his courtship, and J. Pinkney Bloom, with a pon- 
derous agility half professional and half directed by 
some resurrected, unnamed, long-forgotten sentiment, 
formed a diversified but attentive court. The cur- 
rant wine — wine home made from the Holly Springs 
fruit — went round; and then J. Pinkney began to hear 
something of Holly Springs life. 

It seemed ( from the conversation of the Blaylocks) 
that the Springs was decadent. A third of the popu- 
lation had moved away. Business — and the Colonel 
was an authority on business — had dwindled to noth- 

42 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

ing. After carefully studying the field of opportuni- 
ties open to capital he had sold his little property there 
for eight hundred dollars, and invested it in one of 
the enterprises opened up by the book in Okochee. 

"Might I inquire, sir," said Mr. Bloom, "in what 
particular line of business you inserted your coin? I 
know that town as well as I know the regulations for 
illegal use of the mails. I might give you a hunch 
as to whether you can make the game go or not." 

J. Pinkney, somehow, had a kindly feeling toward 
these unsophisticated representatives of by-gone days. 
They were so simple, impractical, and unsuspecting. 
He was glad that he happened not to have a gold 
brick or a block of that western Bad Boy Silver Mine 
stock along with him. He would have disliked to 
unload on people he liked so well as he did these; but 
there are some temptations too enticing to be re- 
sisted. 

"No, sir," said Colonel Blaylock, pausing to ar- 
range the queen's wrap. "I did not invest in Oko- 
chee. I have made an exhaustive study of business 
conditions, and I regard old settled towns as un- 
favourable fields in which to place capital that is 
limited in amount. Some months ago, through the 
kindness of a friend, there came into my hands a map 
and description of this new town of Skyland that has 
been built upon the lake. The description was so 
pleasing, the future of the town set forth in such 
convincing arguments, and its increasing prosperity 
portrayed in such an attractive style that I decided 

43 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

to take advantage of the opportunity it offered. I 
carefully selected a lot in the centre of the business 
district, although its price was the highest in the 
schedule — five hundred dollars — and made the pur- 
chase at once." 

"Are you the man — I mean, did you pay five 
hundred dollars for a lot in Sty^land?" asked J. 
Pinknev Bloom. 

*'I did, sir," answered the Colonel, with the air of 
a modest millionaire explaining his success; "a lot 
most excellently situated on the same square with the 
opera house, and only two squares from the board 
of trade. I consider the purchase a most fortuitous 
one. It is my intention to erect a small building upon 
it at once, and open a modest book and stationery 
store. During past years I have met with many 
pecuniary reverses, and I now find it necessary to 
engage in some commercial occupation that will fur- 
nish me with a liveliliood. The book and stationery 
business, though an humble one, seems to me not 
inapt nor altogether uncongenial. I am a graduate of 
the University of Virginia; and Mrs. Blaylock's really 
wonderful acquaintance with belles-letters and poetic 
literature should go far toward insuring success. Of 
course, Mrs. Blaylock would not personally serve be- 
hind the counter. With the nearly three hundred dol- 
lars I have remaining I can manage the building of a 
house, by giving a lien on the lot. I have an old 
friend in Atlanta who is a partner in a large book 
store, and he has agreed to furnish me with a stock 

44 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

of goods on credit, on extremely easy terms. I am 
pleased to hope, sir, that Mrs. Blaylock's health and 
happiness will be increased by the change of locality. 
Already I fancy I can perceive the return of those 
roses that were once the hope and despair of Georgia 
cavaliers." 

Again followed that wonderful bow, as the Colonel 
lightly touched the pale cheek of the poetess. Mrs. 
Blaylock, blushing like a girl, shook her curl and 
gave the Colonel an arch, reproving tap. Secret of 
eternal youth — where art thou.^^ Every second the 
answer comes — "Here, here, here." Listen to thine 
own heart-beats, O weary seeker after external mir- 
acles. 

"Those years," said Mrs. Blaylock, "in Holly 
Springs were long, long, long. But now is the prom- 
ised land in sight, Skyland ! — a lovely name." 

"Doubtless," said the Colonel, "we shall be able 
to secure comfortable accommodations at some mod- 
est hotel at reasonable rates. Our trunks are in 
Okochee, to be forwarded when we shall have made 
permanent arrangements." 

J. Pinkney Bloom excused himself, went forward, 
and stood by the captain at the wheel. 

"Mac," said he, "do you remember my telling 
you once that I sold one of those five-hundred-dollar 
lots in Skyland.^" 

"Seems I do," grinned Captain MacFarland. 

"I'm not a coward, as a general rule," went on 
the promoter, "but I always said that if I ever met 

45 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

the sucker that bought that lot I'd run Uke a turkey. 
Now, you see that old babe-in-the-wood over there? 
Well, he's the boy that drew the prize. That was the 
only five-hundred-dollar lot that went. The rest 
ranged from ten dollars to two hundred. His wife 
writes poetry. She's invented one about the high 
grounds of Georgia, that's way up in G. They're 
going to Skyland to open a book store." 

"Well," said MacFarland, with another grin, "it's 
a good thing you are along, J. P. ; you can show 'em 
around town until they begin to feel at home." 

"He's got three hundred dollars left to build a 
house and store with," went on J. Pinkney, as if he 
were talking to himself. "And he thinks there's an 
opera house up there." 

Captain MacFarland released the wheel long enough 
to give his leg a roguish slap. 

"You old fat rascal!" he chuckled, with a wink. 

"Mac, you're a fool," said J. Pinkney Bloom coldly. 
He went back and joined the Blaylocks, where he 
sat, less talkative, with that straight furrow between 
his brows that always stood as a signal of schemes 
being shaped within. 

"There's a good many swindles connected with 
these booms," he said presently. "What if this Sky- 
land should turn out to be one — that is, suppose 
business should be sort of dull there, and no special 
sale for books?" 

"My dear sir," said Colonel Blaylock, resting his 
hand upon the back of his wife's chair, "three times 

46 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

I have been reduced to almost penury by the duplicity 
of others, but I have not yet lost faith in humanity. 
If I have been deceived again, still we may glean 
health and content, if not worldly profit. I am aware 
that there are dishonest schemers in the world who 
set traps for the unwary, but even they are not alto- 
gether bad. My dear, can you recall those verses 
entitled, 'He Giveth the Increase,' that you com- 
posed for the choir of our church in Holly Springs?" 

"That was four years ago," said Mrs. Blaylock; 
"perhaps I can repeat a verse or two. 

"The lily springs from the rotting mould; 
Pearls from the deep sea slime; 
Good will come out of Nazareth 
All in God's own time. 

"To the hardest heart the softening grace ' 
Cometh, at last, to bless; 
Guiding it right to help and cheer 
And succoxu: in distress. 

"I cannot remember the rest. The lines were not 
ambitious. They were written to the music composed 
by a dear friend." 

"It's a fine rhyme, just the same," declared Mr. 
Bloom. "It seems to ring the bell, all right. I guess 
I gather the sense of it. It means that the rankest 
kind of a phony will give you the best end of it once 
in a while." 

Mr. Bloom strayed thoughtfully back to the cap- 
tain, and stood, meditating. 

"Ought to be in sight of the spires and gilded 

47 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

domes of Skyland now in a few minutes," chirruped 
MacFarland, shaking with enjoyment. 

"Go to the devil/' said Mr. Bloom, still pensive. 

And now, upon the left bank, they caught a glimpse 
of a white village, high up on the hills, smothered 
among green trees. That was Cold Branch — no 
boom town, but the slow growth of many years. Cold 
Branch lay on the edge of the grape and corn lands. 
The big, country road ran just back of the heights. 
Cold Branch had nothing in common with the frisky 
ambition of Okochee with its impertinent lake. 

*'Mac,'' said J. Pinkney suddenly, "I want you to 
stop at Cold Branch. There's a landing there that 
they made to use sometimes when the river was up." 

"Can't," said the captain, grinning more broadly. 
"I've got the United States mails on board. Right 
to-day this boat's in the government service. Do 
you want to have the poor old captain keelhauled by 
Uncle Sam? And the great city of Skyland, all dis- 
consolate, waiting for its mail.^ I'm ashamed of your 
extravagance, J. P." 

"Mac," almost whispered J. Pinkney, in his dan- 
ger-line voice, "I looked into the engine room of the 
Dixie Belle a while ago. Don't you know of some- 
body that needs a new boiler? Cement and black 
Japan can't hide flaws from me. And then, those 
shares of building and loan that you traded for re- 
pairs — they were all yours, of course. I hate to men- 
tion these things, but " 

*'0h, come now, J. P.," said the captain. "You 

48 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

know I was just fooling. I'll put you oflf at Cold 
Branch, if you say so." 

"The other passengers get off there, too," said Mr. 
Bloom. 

Further conversation was held, and in ten minutes 
the Dixie Belle turned her nose toward a little, 
cranky wooden pier on the left bank, and the captain, 
relinquishing the wheel to a roustabout, came to the 
passenger deck and made the remarkable announce- 
ment: "All out for Skyland." 

The Blaylocks and J. Pinkney Bloom disembarked, 
and the Dixie Belle proceeded on her way up the 
lake. Guided by the indefatigable promoter, they 
slowly climbed the steep hillside, pausing often to 
rest and admire the view. Finally they entered the 
village of Cold Branch. Warmly both the Colonel 
and his wife praised it for its homelike and peaceful 
beauty. Mr. Bloom conducted them to a two-story 
building on a shady street that bore the legend, "Pine- 
top Inn." Here he took his leave, receiving the cor- 
dial thanks of the two for his attentions, the Colonel 
remarking that he thought they would spend the re- 
mainder of the day in rest, and take a look at his pur- 
chase on the morrow. 

J. Pinkney Bloom walked down Cold Branch's 
main street. He did not know this town, but he 
knew towns, and his feet did not falter. Presently 
he saw a sign over a door: "Frank E. Cooly, At- 
torney-at-Law and Notary Public.'* A young man 
was Mr. Cooly, and awaiting business. 

49 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"Get your hat, son," said IMr. Bloom, in his breezy- 
way, "and a blank deed, and come along. It's a 
job for you." 

"Now," he continued, when Mr. Cooly had re- 
sponded with alacrity, " is there a bookstore in town.^ " 

"One," said the lawyer. "Henry Williams's." 

"Get there," said Mr. Bloom. "We're going to 
buy it." 

Henry Williams was behind his counter. His store 
was a small one, containing a mixture of books, sta- 
tionery, and fancy rubbish. Adjoining it was Henry's 
home — a decent cottage, vine-embowered and cosy. 
Henry was lank and soporific, and not inclined to 
rush his business. 

"I want to buy your house and store," said Mr. 
Bloom. "I haven't got time to dicker — ^name your 
price." 

"It's worth eight hundred," said Henry, too much 
dazed to ask more than its value. 

"Shut that door," said Mr. Bloom to the lawyer. 
Then he tore off his coat and vest, and began to un- 
button his shirt. 

"Wanter fight about it, do yer?" said Henry Wil- 
liams jumping up and cracking his heels together 
twice. "All right, hunky — sail in and cut yer ca- 
pers." 

"Keep your clothes on," said Mr. Bloom. "I'm 
only going down to the bank." 

He drew eight one-hundred-dollar bills from his 
money belt and planked them down on the counter. 

50 



<6 



OUT OF NAZARETH 

Mr. Cooly showed signs of future promise, for he 
already had the deed spread out, and was reaching 
across the counter for the ink bottle. Never before 
or since was such quick action had in Cold Branch. 
Your name, please .f^" asked the lawyer. 
Make it out to Peyton Blaylock," said Mr. Bloom. 

God knows how to spell it." 

Within thirty minutes Henry Williams was out of 
business, and Mr. Bloom stood on the brick sidewalk 
with Mr. Cooly, who held in his hand the signed and 
attested deed. 

"You'll find the party at the PInetop Inn," said J. 
Pinkney Bloom. "Get it recorded, and take it 
down and give it to him. He'll ask you a hell's mint 
of questions; so here's ten dollars for the trouble you'll 
have in not being able to answer 'em. Never run 
much to poetry, did you, young man?" 

"Well," said the really talented Cooly, who even 
yet retained his right mmd, "now and then." 

"Dig into it," said Mr. Bloom; "it'll pay you. 
Never heard a poem, now, that run something like 
this, did you? — 

"A good thing out of Nazareth 
Comes up sometimes, I guess. 
On hand, all right, to help and cheer 
A sucker in distress." 

I believe not," said Mr. Cooly. 

It's a hymn," said J. Pinkney Bloom. "Now, 
show me the way to a livery stable, son, for I'm going 
to hit the dirt road back to Okochee." 

51 



<6 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

THERE was a painless stage of incubation that 
lasted twenty -five years, and then it broke out 
on me, and people said I was It. 

But they called it humour instead of measles. 

The employees in the store bought a silver ink- 
stand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. 
We crowded into his private office to present it. 

I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a 
little speech that I had been preparing for a week. 

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams 
and funny twists that brought down the house — 
which was a very solid one in the wholesale hardware 
line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the 
employees took their cue and roared. 

My reputation as a humourist dates from half -past 
nine o'clock on that morning. 

For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the 
flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to 
me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, 
old man, and carefully explained to me the point of 
each one of my jokes. 

Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. 
Others might speak sanely on business matters and 
the day's topics, but from me something gamesome 
and airy was required. 

52 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery 
and lighten up the granite ware with persiflage. I 
was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a 
balance sheet without something comic about the 
footings or could find no cause for laughter in an 
invoice of plows, the other clerks were disappointed. 

By degrees my fame spread, and I became a local 
"character." Our town was small enough to make 
this possible. The daily newspaper quoted me. At 
social gatherings I was indispensable. 

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a 
facility for quick and spontaneous repartee. This 
gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And the 
nature of it was kindly and genial, ^^^ running to sar- 
casm or offending others. People began to smile 
when they saw me coming, and by the time we had 
met I generally had the word ready to broaden the 
smile into a laugh. 

I had married early. We had a charming boy of 
three and a girl of five. Naturally, we lived in a 
vine-covered cottage, and were happy. My salary 
as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a 
distance those ills attendant upon superfluous wealth. 

At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and 
conceits that I considered peculiarly happy, and had 
sent^them to certain periodicals that print such things. 
All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of 
the editors had written to request further contributions. 

One day I received a letter from the editor of a 
famous weekly publication. He suggested that I 

53 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

submit to him a humorous composition to fill a 
column of space; hinting that he would make it a 
regular feature of each issue if the work proved 
satisfactory. I did so, and at the end of two weeks 
he offered to make a contract with me for a year at a 
figure that was considerably higher than the amount 
paid me by the hardware firm. 

I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned 
me in her mind with the imperishable evergreens of 
literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a 
bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. 
Here was the chance to liberate myself from drudgery. 
I talked over the matter very seriously with Louisa. 
We agreed that I must resign my place at the store 
and devote myself to humour. 

I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell 
banquet. The speech I made there coruscated. It 
was printed in full by the Gazette. The next morning 
I awoke and looked at the clock. 

"Late, by George!" I exclaimed, and grabbed for 
my clothes. Louisa reminded me that I was no 
longer a slave to hardware and contractors' supplies. 
I was now a professional humourist. 

After breakfast she proudly led me to the little 
room off the kitchen. Dear girl! There was my 
table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And 
all the author's trappings — the celery stand full of 
fresh roses and honeysuckle, last year's calendar on 
the wall, the dictionary, and a little bag of chocolates 
to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl ! 

54 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with 
arabesques or odalisks or — ^perhaps — it is trapezoids. 
Upon one of the figures I fixed my eyes. I bethought 
me of humour. 

A voice startled me — ^Louisa's voice. 

"If you aren't too busy, dear," it said, "come to 
dinner." 

I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been 
gathered in by the grim scytheman. I went to dinner. 

"You mustn't work too hard at first," said Louisa. 
"Goethe — or was it Napoleon .f^ — said five hours a day 
is enough for mental labour. Couldn't you take me 
and the children to the woods this afternoon?" 

"I am a little tired," I admitted. So we went to 
the woods. 

But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I 
was turning out copy as regular as shipments of hard- 
ware. 

And I had success. My column in the weekly 
made some stir, and I was referred to in a gossipy way 
by the critics as something fresh in the line of humour- 
ists. I augmented my income considerably by con- 
tributing to other publications. 

I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a 
funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning a 
dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve up 
cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. 
By turning the skirt and adding a rufl3e of rhyme you 
would hardly recognize it as vers de societe with neatly 
shod feet and a fashion-plate illustration. 

55 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

I began to save up money, and we had new carpets 
and a parlour organ. My townspeople began to 
look upon me as a citizen of some consequence in- 
stead of the merry trifler I had been when I clerked 
in the hardware store. 

After five or six months the spontaneity seemed to 
depart from my humour. Quips and droll sayings no 
longer fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes 
hard run for material. I found myself listening to 
catch available ideas from the conversation of my 
friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed 
at the wail paper for hours trying to build up some 
gay little bubble of unstudied fun. 

And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, 
a vampire to my acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, 
greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy. 
Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant 
phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a 
hound springing upon a bone. I dared not trust my 
memory; but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I 
would make a note of it in my ever-present mem- 
orandum book or upon my cuff for my own future 
use. 

My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. 
I was not the same man. Where once I had fur- 
nished them entertainment and jollity, I now preyed 
upon them. No jests from me ever bid for their smiles 
now. They were too precious. I could not afford to 
dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood. 

I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my 

56 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

friends, the crows, that they might drop from their 
beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted. 

Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even 
forgot how to smile, not even paying that much for 
the sayings I appropriated. 

No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt 
from my plundering in search of material. Even in 
church my demoralized fancy went hunting among 
the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil. 

Did the minister give out the longmeter doxology, 
at once I began : " Doxology — sockdology — sockdol- 
ager — meter — meet her." 

The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its 
precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a sug- 
gestion of a pun or a bon mot. The solemnest 
anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to 
my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring 
upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jeal- 
ousies of soprano, tenor, and basso. 

My own home became a hunting ground. My 
wife is a singularly feminine creature, candid, sympa- 
thetic, and impulsive. Once her conversation was 
my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleas- 
ure. Now I worked her. She was a gold mine of 
those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that dis- 
tinguish the female mind. 

I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and 
humour that should have enriched only the sacred 
precincts of home. With devilish cunning I en- 
couraged her to talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her 

57 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

heart bare. Upon the cold, conspicuous, common, 
printed page I offered it to the public gaze. 

A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. 
For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet confidences in 
the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them 
dance in the market place. 

Dear Louisa ! Of nights I have bent over her cruel 
as a wolf above a tender lamb, hearkening even to 
her soft words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch 
an idea for my next day's grind. There is worse to 
come. 

God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep 
in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my little chil- 
dren. 

Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of child- 
ish, quaint thoughts and speeches. I found a ready 
sale for this kind of humour, and was furnishing a 
regular department in a magazine with "Funny 
Fancies of Childhood." I began to stalk them as an 
Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide behind 
sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees 
among the bushes in the yard to eavesdrop while 
they were at play. I had all the qualities of a harpy 
except remorse. 

Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy 
must leave in the next mail, I covered myself in a 
pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they 
intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to 
believe that Guy was aware of my hiding place, but 
even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his 

58 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction of my 
new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent. 

Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. 
Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melan- 
choly ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: 
"Here comes papa," and they would gather their 
toys and scurry away to some safer hiding place. 
Miserable wretch that I was ! 

And yet I was doing well financially. Before the 
first year had passed I had saved a thousand dollars, 
and we had lived in comfort. 

But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to 
what a pariah is, but I was everything that it sounds 
like. I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoy- 
ment of life. The happiness of my family had been 
sacrificed. I was a bee, sucking sordid honey from 
life's fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account 
of my sting. 

One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and 
friendly smile. Not in months had the thing hap- 
pened. I was passing the undertaking establish- 
ment of Peter Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door 
and saluted me. I stopped, strangely wrung in my 
heart by his greeting. He asked me inside. 

The day was chill and rainy. We went into the 
back room, where a fire burned in a little stove. A 
customer came, and Peter left me alone for a while. 
Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me — a 
sense of beautiful calm and content. I looked 
around the place. There were rows of shining rose- 

59 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

wood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, 
mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the 
solemn trade. Here was peace, order, silence, the 
abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on 
the brink of life, was a little niche pervaded by the 
spirit of eternal rest. 

WTien I entered it, the follies of the world aban- 
doned me at the door. I felt no inclination to wrest a 
humorous idea from those sombre and stately trap- 
pings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful 
repose upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts. 

A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned hum- 
ourist. Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and 
ease. I had found a refuge from humour, from the 
hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit 
of the panting joke, from the restless reach after 
the nimble repartee. 

I had not known Heffelbower well. TMien he came 
back, I let him talk, fearful that he might prove to be 
a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike harmony of his 
establishment. 

But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of 
happiness. Never have I known a man's talk to be 
as magnificently dull as Peter's was. Compared 
with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a 
glimmer of wit marred his words. Commonplaces as 
trite and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from his 
lips no more stirring in quality than a last week's 
tape running from a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried 
upon him one of my best pointed jokes. It fell back 

60 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved that man 
from then on. 

Two or three evenings each week I would steal 
down to Heffelbower's and revel in his back room. 
That was my only joy. I began to rise early and 
hurry through my work, that I might spend more 
time in my haven. In no other place could I throw 
off my habit of extracting humorous ideas from my 
surroundings. Peter's talk left me no opening had 
I besieged it ever so hard. 

Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. 
It was the recreation from one's labour which every 
man needs. I surprised one or two of my former 
friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word 
as I passed them on the streets. Several times I 
dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to 
make a jocose remark in their presence. 

I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humour 
that I seized my hours of holiday with a schoolboy's 
zest. 

My work began to suffer. It was not the pain 
and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled 
at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than 
before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as 
anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard 
is to get to his tavern. 

My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing 
where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not 
to tell her; women do not understand these things. 
Poor girl ! — she had one shock out of it. 

61 



W.\IFS AXD STRAYS 

One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a 
paper weight and a fine, fluffy hearse plume to dust 
my papers with. 

I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the 
beloved back room down at Heffelbower's. But 
Louisa found them, and she shrieked with horror. I 
had to console her with some lame excuse for having 
them, but I saw in her eyes that the prejudice was 
not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, 
at double-quick time. 

One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a tempta- 
tion that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, un- 
inspired way he showed me his books, and explained 
that his profits and his business were increasing 
rapidly. He had thought of taking in a partner 
with some cash. He would rather have me than any 
one he knew. \Mien I left his place that afternoon 
Peter had mv check for the thousand dollars I had 
in the bank, and I was a partner in his undertaking 
business. 

I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled 
with a certain amount of doubt. I was dreading to 
tell mv wife about it. But I walked on air. To 
give up the writing of humorous stuff, once more to 
enjoy the apples of life, instead of squeezing them 
to a pulp for a few drops of hard cider to make the 
public feel funny — what a boon that would be ! 

At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters 
that had come during my absence. Several of them 
contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first 

62 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

began going to Heffelbower's my stuff had been 
coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had 
been dashing off my jokes and articles with the great- 
est fluency. Previously I had laboured like a brick- 
layer, slowly and with agony. 

Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the 
weekly with which I had a regular contract. The 
checks for that weekly article were still our main de- 
pendence. The letter ran thus: 

Dear Sm: 

As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the 
present month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, 
we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming 
year. We were quite pleased with your style of humour, which 
seems to have dehghted quite a large proportion of our readers. 
But for the past two months we have noticed a decided falling 
off in its quality. 

Your earlier work showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow 
of fun and wit. Of late it is laboured, studied, and imcon- 
vincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil and drudging mech- 
anism. 

Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions 
available any longer, we are, yours sincerely, 

The Editor. 

I handed this letter to my wife. After she had 
read it her face grew extremely long, and there were 
tears in her eyes. 

'*The mean old thing!" she exclaimed indignantly. 
"I'm sure your pieces are just as good as they ever 
were. And it doesn't take you half as long to write 

63 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

them as it did/* And then, I suppose, Louisa thought 
of the checks* that would cease coming. *' Oh, John," 
she wailed, "what will you do now?" 

For an answer I got up and began to do a polka 
step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa 
thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think 
the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, 
yelling with glee and emulating my steps. I was now 
something like their old playmate as of yore. 

"The theatre for us to-night!" I shouted; "noth- 
ing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for 
all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumty-diddle- 
de-dee-de-dum ! " 

And then I explained my glee by declaring that I 
was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking es- 
tablishment, and that written jokes might go hide 
their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me. 

With the editor's letter in her hand to justify the 
deed I had done, my wife could advance no objec- 
tions save a few mild ones based on the feminine 
inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little 

back room of Peter Hef no, of Heflfelbower & Go's. 

undertaking establishment. 

Li conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find 
no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full 
of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised 
about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my 
wife's confidential chatter without a mercenary 
thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet dis- 
tributing gems of childish humour without fear of the 

64 



CONFESSIONS OF A HUMOURIST 

ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, note- 
book in hand. 

Our business has prospered finely. I keep the 
books and look after the shop, while Peter attends 
to outside matters. He says that my levity and 
high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a 
regular Irish wake. 



65 



THE SPARROWS IN IMADISON SQUARE 

THE young man in straitened circumstances 
who comes to New York City to enter litera- 
ture has but one thing to do, provided he has 
studied carefully his field in advance. He must go 
straight to Madison Square, write an article about the 
sparrows there, and sell it to the Su7i for $15. 

I cannot recall either a novel or a story dealing 
with the popular theme of the young writer from 
the provinces who comes to the metropolis to win 
fame and fortune with his pen in which the hero 
does not get his start that way. It does seem strange 
that some author, in casting about for startlingly 
original plots, has not hit upon the idea of having 
his hero write about the bluebirds in Union Square 
and sell it to the Herald. But a search through the 
files of metropolitan fiction counts up overwhelm- 
ingly for the sparrows and the old Garden Square, 
and the Sun alwavs writes the check. 

Of course it is easy to understand why this first 
city venture of the budding author is always suc- 
cessful. He is primed by necessity to a superlative 
effort ; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roar- 
ing city he has found this spot of singing birds and 
green grass and trees; everj^ tender sentiment in his 
nature is battling with the sweet pain of homesick- 

66 



THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE 

ness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; 
the birds chirp, the tree branches sway, the noise of 
wheels is forgotten; he writes with his soul in his pen 
— and he sells it to the Sun for $15. 

I had read of this custom during many years before 
I came to New York. "^Mien my friends were using 
their strongest arguments to dissuade me from com- 
ing, I only smiled serenely. They did not know of 
that sparrow graft I had up my sleeve. 

WTien I arrived in New York, and the car took 
me straight from the ferry up Twenty-third Street 
to Madison Square, I could hear that $15 check rus- 
tling in my inside pocket. 

I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, 
and the next morning I was on a bench in Madison 
Square almost by the time the sparrows were awake. 
Their melodious chirping, the benignant spring 
foliage of the noble trees and the clean, fragrant 
grass reminded me so potently of the old farm I had 
left that tears almost came into my eyes. 

Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The 
brave, piercing notes of those cheerful small birds 
formed a keynote to a wonderful, light, fanciful song 
of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they were 
creatures with hearts pitched to the tune of woods 
and fields; as I was, so were they captives by cir- 
cumstance in the discordant, dull city — ^yet with how 
much grace and glee they bore the restraint! 

And then the early morning people began to pass 
through the square to their work — sullen people, with 

67 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

sidelong glances and glum faces, hurrying, hurrying, 
hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from 
the bird notes, and wrought it into a lesson, and a 
poem, and a carnival dance, and a lullaby; and then 
translated it all into prose and began to write. 

For two hours my pencil travelled over my pad 
with scarcely a rest. Then I went to the little room 
I had rented for two days, and there I cut it to half, 
and then mailed it, white-hot, to the Sun, 

The next morning I was up by daylight and spent 
two cents of my capital for a paper. If the word 
** sparrow'* was in it I was unable to find it. 

I took it up to my room and spread it out on the 
bed and went over it, column by column. Some- 
thing was wrong. 

Three hours afterward the postman brought me a 
large envelope containing my MS. and a piece of 
inexpensive paper, about 3 inches by 4 — I suppose 
some of you have seen them — upon which was written 
in violet ink, "With the Suns thanks." 

I went over to the square and sat upon a bench. 
No; I did not think it necessary to eat any breakfast 
that morning. The confounded pests of sparrows 
were making the square hideous with their idiotic 
"cheep, cheep." I never saw birds so persistently 
noisy, impudent, and disagreeable in all my life. 

By this time, according to all traditions, I should 
have been standing in the oflSce of the editor of the 
Sun, That personage — a tall, grave, white-haired 
man — would strike a silver bell as he grasped my 

68 



THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE 

hand and wiped a suspicious moisture from his 
glasses. 

"Mr. McChesney," he would be saying when a 
subordinate appeared, *'this is IVIr. Henry, the young 
man who sent in that exquisite gem about the spar- 
rows in Madison Square. You may give him a desk 
at once. Your salary, sir, will be $80 a week, to 
begin with." 

This was what I had been led to expect by all 
writers who have evolved romances of Kterary New 
York. 

Something was decidedly wrong with tradition. I 
could not assume the blame; so I fixed it upon the 
sparrows. I began to hate them with intensity and 
heat. 

At that moment an individual wearing an excess of 
whiskers, two hats, and a pestilential air shd into the 
seat beside me. 

"Say, Willie," he muttered cajolingly, "could you 
cough up a dime out of your coffers for a cup of 
coffee this morning?" 

"I'm lung-weary, my friend," said I. "The best I 
can do is three cents." 

"And you look like a gentleman, too," said he. 
"What brung you down — booze?" 

"Birds," I said fiercely. "The brown-throated 
songsters carolling songs of hope and cheer to weary 
man toiling amid the city's dust and din. The little 
feathered couriers from the meadows and woods 
chirping sweetly to us of blue skies and flowermg 

69 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

fields. The confounded little squint-eyed nuisances 
yawping like a flock of steam pianos, and stuflSng 
themselves like aldermen with grass seeds and bugs, 
while a man sits on a bench and goes without his 
breakfast. Yes, sir, birds! look at them!" 

As I spoke I picked up a dead tree branch that 
lay by the bench, and hurled it with all my force 
into a close congregation of the sparrows on the 
grass. The flock flew to the trees with a babel of 
shrill cries; but two of them remained prostrate 
upon the turf. 

In a moment my unsavoury friend had leaped over 
the row of benches and secured the fluttering vic- 
tims, which he thrust hurriedly into his pockets. 
Then he beckoned me with a dirty forefinger. 

" Come on, cully," he said hoarsely. " You're in 
on the feed." 

Weakly I followed my dingy acquaintance. He led 
me away from the park down a side street and 
through a crack in a fence into a vacant lot where 
some excavating had been going on. Behind a pile 
of old stones and lumber he paused, and took out his 
birds. 

'*I got matches," said he. "You got any paper to 
start a fire with?" 

I drew forth my manuscript story of the sparrows, 
and offered it for burnt sacrifice. There were old 
planks, splinters, and chips for our fire. My frowsy 
friend produced from some interior of his frayed 
clothing half a loaf of bread, pepper, and salt. 

70 



THE SPARROWS IN MADISON SQUARE 

In ten minutes each of us was holding a sparrow 
spitted upon a stick over the leaping flames. 

*' Say," said my fellow bivouacker, " this ain't so bad 
when a fellow's himgry. It reminds me of when I 
struck New York first — about fifteen years ago. I 
come in from the West to see if I could get a job on 
a newspaper. I hit the Madison Square Park the first 
mornin' after, and was sittin' around on the benches. 
I noticed the sparrows chirpin', and the grass and 
trees so nice and green that I thought I was back in 
the country again. Then I got some papers out of 
my pocket, and " 

"I know," I interrupted. "You sent it to the Sun 
and got $15." 

"Say," said my friend, suspiciously, "you seem to 
know a good deal. Where was you.^^ I went to sleep 
on the bench there, in the sun, and somebody touched 
me for every cent I had — $15." 



71 



HEARTS AND HANDS 

4 T DEN\\ER there was an influx of passengers 

/% into the coaches on the eastbound B. & M. 
J^ M^ express. In one coach there sat a very pretty 
young woman dressed in elegant taste and sur- 
rounded by all the luxurious comforts of an expe- 
rienced traveller. Among the newcomers were two 
young men, one of handsome presence with a bold, 
frank countenance and manner; the other a ruffled, 
glum-faced person, heavily built and roughly dressed. 
The two were handcuffed together. 

As they passed down the aisle of the coach the only 
vacant seat offered was a reversed one facing the 
attractive young woman. Here the linked couple 
seated themselves. The young woman's glance fell 
upon them with a distant, swift disinterest; then 
with a lovely smile brightening her countenance and a 
tender pink tingeing her rounded cheeks, she held out 
a little gray -gloved hand. When she spoke her voice, 
full, sweet, and deliberate, proclaimed that its owner 
was accustomed to speak and be heard. 

*' Well, !Mr. Easton, if you will make me speak first, 
I suppose I must. Don't you ever recognize old 
friends when you meet them in the West.'^" 

The younger man roused himself sharply at the 
sound of her voice, seemed to struggle with a slight 

72 



HEARTS AND HANDS 

embarrassment which he threw off instantly, and 
then clasped her fingers with his left hand. 

"It's Miss Fairchild," he said, with a smile. "I'll 
ask you to excuse the other hand; it's otherwise en- 
gaged just at present." 

He slightly raised his right hand, bound at the 
wrist by the shining "bracelet" to the left one of his 
companion. The glad look in the girl's eyes slowly 
changed to a bewildered horror. The glow faded from 
her cheeks. Her lips parted in a vague, relaxing distress . 
Easton, with a little laugh, as if amused, was about 
to speak again when the other forestalled him. The 
glum-faced man had been watching the girl's counte- 
nance with veiled glances from his keen, shrewd eyes. 

"You'll excuse me for speaking, miss, but I see 
you're acquainted with the marshal here. If you'll 
ask him to speak a word for me when we get to the 
pen he'll do it, and it'll make things easier for me 
there. He's taking me to Leavenworth prison. It's 
seven years for counterfeiting." 

"Oh!" said the girl, with a deep breath and re- 
turning colour. "So, that is what you are doing out 
here ? A marshal ! ' ' 

"My dear Miss Fairchild," said Easton calmly, 
"I had to do something. Money has a way of taking 
wings unto itself, and you know it takes money to 
keep step with our crowd in Washington. I saw this 
opening in the West, and — well, a marshalship 
isn't quite as high a position as that of ambassador, 
but " 

73 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

**The ambassador," said the girl warmly, "doesn't 
call any more. He needn't ever have done so. You 
ought to know that. And so now you are one of 
these dashing Western heroes, and you ride and shoot 
and go into all kinds of dangers. That's different 
from the Washington life. You have been missed 
from the old crowd." 

The girl's eyes, fascinated, went back, widening a 
little, to rest upon the glittering handcuffs. 

"Don't you worry about them, miss," said the 
other man. "All marshals handcuff themselves to 
their prisoners to keep them from getting away. 
Mr. Easton knows his business." 

"Will we see you again soon in Washington?" 
asked the girl. 

"Not soon, I think," said Easton. "My butterfly 
days are over, I fear." 

"I love the West," said the girl irrelevantly. Her 
eyes were shining softly. She looked away out the 
car window. She began to speak truly and simply, 
without the gloss of style and manner : " Mamma and 
I spent the summer in Denver. She went home a 
week ago because father was slightly ill. I could live 
and be happy in the West. I think the air here 
agrees with me. Money isn't everything. But peo- 
ple always misunderstand things and remain stu- 
pid " 

"Say, Mr. Marshal," growled the glum-faced 
man. "This isn't quite fair. I'm needin' a drink, 
and haven't had a smoke all day. Haven't you 

74 



HEARTS AND HANDS 

talked long enough? Take me in the smoker now, 
won't you? I'm half dead for a pipe." 

The bound travellers rose to their feet, Easton with 
the same slow smile on his face. 

"I can't deny a petition for tobacco," he said 
lightly. "It's the one friend of the unfortunate. 
Good-bye, Miss Fairchild. Duty calls, you know." 
He held out his hand for a farewell. 

"It's too bad you are not going East," she said, 
reclothing herself with manner and style. "But you 
must go on to Leavenworth, I suppose?" 

"Yes," said Easton, "I must go on to Leaven- 
worth." 

The two men sidled down the aisle into the smoker. 

Two passengers in a seat near by had heard most 
of the conversation. Said one of them: "That 
marshal's a good sort of chap. Some of these West- 
ern fellows are all right." 

"Pretty young to hold an office like that, isn't he?'* 
asked the other. 

"Young!" exclaimed the first speaker, "why — 
Oh! didn't you catch on? Say — did you ever know 
an officer to handcuflf a prisoner to his right hand?" 



75 



THE CACTUS 

THE most notable thing about Time is that it 
is so purely relative. A large amount of 
reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded 
to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that 
one may review an entire courtship while removing 
one's gloves. 

That is what Trysdale was doing, standing by a 
table in his bachelor apartments. On the table stood 
a singular-looking green plant in a red earthen jar. 
The plant was one of the species of cacti, and was 
provided with long, tentacular leaves that perpetu- 
ally swayed with the slightest breeze with a peculiar 
beckoning motion. 

Trysdale's friend, the brother of the bride, stood at 
a sideboard complaining at being allowed to drink 
alone. Both men were in evening dress. White 
favours like stars upon their coats shone through the 
gloom of the apartment. 

As he slowly unbuttoned his gloves, there passed 
through Trysdale's mind a swift, scarifying retrospect 
of the last few hours. It seemed that in his nostrils 
was still the scent of the flowers that had been banked 
in odorous masses about the church, and in his ears 
the low-pitched hum of a thousand well-bred voices, 
the rustle of crisp garments, and, most insistently 

76 



THE CACTUS 

recurring, the drawling words of the minister ir- 
revocably binding her to another. 

From this last, hopeless point of view he still 
strove, as if it had become a habit of his mind, to 
reach some conjecture as to why and how he had lost 
her. Shaken rudely by the uncompromising fact, he 
had suddenly found himself confronted by a thing 
he had never before faced — ^his own innermost, un- 
mitigated, and unbedecked self. He saw all the 
garbs of pretence and egoism that he had worn now 
turn to rags of folly. He shuddered at the thought 
that to others, before now, the garments of his soul 
must have appeared sorry and threadbare. Vanity 
and conceit! These were the joints in his armour. 

And how free from either she had always been 

But why 

As she had slowly moved up the aisle toward the 
altar he had felt an unworthy, sullen exultation that 
had served to support him. He had told himself that 
her paleness was from thoughts of another than the 
man to whom she was about to give herself. But 
even that poor consolation had been wrenched from 
him. For, when he saw that swift, limpid, upward 
look that she gave the man when he took her hand, 
he knew himself to be forgotten. Once that same 
look had been raised to him, and he had gauged its 
meaning. Indeed, his conceit had crumbled; its 
last prop was gone. Why had it ended thus.f^ There 
had been no quarrel between them, nothing 

For the thousandth time he remarshalled in his 

77 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

mind the events of those last few days before the 
tide had so suddenly turned. 

She had always insisted upon placing him upon a 
pedestal, and he had accepted her homage with royal 
grandeur. It had been a very sweet incense that she 
had burned before him; so modest (he told himself), 
so childlike and worshipful, and (he would once have 
sworn) so sincere. She had invested him with an 
almost supernatural number of high attributes and 
excellencies and talents, and he had absorbed the 
oblation as a desert drinks the rain that can coax 
from it no promise of blossom or fruit. 

As Trysdale grimly wrenched apart the seam of 
his last glove, the crowning instance of his fatuous 
and tardily mourned egoism came vividly back to 
him. 

The scene was the night when he had asked her to 
come up on his pedestal with him and share his great- 
ness. He could not, now, for the pain of it, allow his 
mind to dwell upon the memory of her convincing 
beauty that night — the careless wave of her hair, 
the tenderness and virginal charm of her looks and 
words. But they had been enough, and they had 
brought him to speak. During their conversation 
she had said: 

*'And Captain Carruthers tells me that you speak 
the Spanish language like a native. TVTiy have you 
hidden this accomplishment from me.^ Is there any- 
thing you do not know?" 

Now, Carruthers was an idiot. No doubt he 

78 



THE CACTUS 

(Trysdale) had been guilty (he sometimes did such 
things) of airing at the club some old, canting Castil- 
ian proverb dug from the hotch-potch at the back 
of dictionaries. Carruthers, who was one of his 
incontinent admirers, was the very man to have 
magnified this exhibition of doubtful erudition. 

But, alas! the incense of her admiration had been 
so sweet and flattering. He allowed the imputa- 
tion to pass without denial. Without protest, he 
allowed her to twine about his brow this spurious 
bay of Spanish scholarship. He let it grace his con- 
quering head, and, among its soft convolutions, he 
did not feel the prick of the thorn that was to pierce 
him later. 

How glad, how shy, how tremulous she was ! How 
she fluttered like a snared bird when he laid his 
mightiness at her feet ! He could have sworn, and he 
could swear now, that unmistakable consent was in 
her eyes, but, coyly, she would give him no direct 
answer. "I will send you my answer to-morrow," 
she said; and he, the indulgent, confident victor, smil- 
ingly granted the delay. 

The next day he waited, impatient, in his rooms for 
the word. At noon her groom came to the door and 
left the strange cactus in the red earthen jar. There 
was no note, no message, merely a tag upon the plant 
bearing a barbarous foreign or botanical name. He 
waited until night, but her answer did not come. His 
large pride and hurt vanity kept him from seeking her. 
Two evenings later they met at a dinner. Their 

79 



WAIFS AXD STRAYS 

greetings were conventional, but she looked at him, 
breathless, wondering, eager. He was courteous, 
adamant, waiting her explanation. With womanly- 
swiftness she took her cue from his manner, and 
turned to snow and ice. Thus, and wider from this 
on, they had drifted apart. \Miere was his fault? 
^Mio had been to blame? Humbled now, he sought 
the answer amid the ruins of his self-conceit. If 

The voice of the other man in the room, querulously 
intruding upon his thoughts, aroused him. 

*'I say% Tr^'sdale, what the deuce is the matter 
with vou? You look unhappv as if vou vourself had 
been married instead of havincj acted merelv as an 
accompUce. Look at me, another accessory^, come 
two thousand miles on a garlick^', cockroachy banana 
steamer all the wav from South America to connive 
at the sacrifice — please to observe how lightly my 
guilt rests upon my shoulders. Only httle sister I 
had, too, and now she's gone. Come now ! take some- 
thing to ease your conscience." 

"I won't drink just now, thanks," said Trysdale. 

*'Your brandy," resumed the other, coming over 
and joining him, ''is abominable. Run down to see 
me some time at Punta Redonda, and tn' some of our 
stuff that old Garcia smuggles in. It's worth the 
trip. Hallo! here's an old acquaintance. ^Mierever 
did you rake up this cactus, Tiysdale? " 

"A present," said Tiysdale, "from a friend. 
Know the species?" 

*'Ven' well. It's a tropical concern. See hun- 

80 



THE CACTUS 

dreds of 'em around Punta every day. Here's the 
name on this tag tied to it. Know any Spanish, 
Try^sdale?" 

"No," said Trysdale, with the bitter wraith of a 
smile — "Is it Spanish?" 

"Yes. The natives imagine the leaves are reach- 
ing out and beckoning to you. They call it by this 
name — Ventomarme, Name means in EngHsh, * Come 
and take me.' " 



81 



THE DETECTI\TS DETECTOR 

I WAS walking in Central Park with Avery Knight 
the great New York burglar, highwayman, and 
murderer. 

"But, my dear Knight," said I, "it sounds incred- 
ible. You have undoubtedly performed some of the 
most wonderful feats in your profession known to 
modern crime. You have committed some marvel- 
lous deeds under the very noses of the police — you 
have boldly entered the homes of millionaries and 
held them up with an empty gun while you made free 
with their silver and jewels; you have sandbagged 
citizens in the glare of Broadway's electric lights; 
you have killed and robbed w ith superb openness and 
absolute impunity — but when you boast that within 
forty -eight hours after committing a murder you can 
run down and actually bring me face to face with 
the detective assigned to apprehend you, I must beg 
leave to express my doubts — remember, you are in 
New York." 

Avery Knight smiled indulgently. 

"You pique my professional pride, doctor," he 
said in a nettled tone. "I will convince you." 

About twelve yards in advance of us a prosperous- 
looking citizen was rounding a clump of bushes 
where the walk curved. Knight suddenly drew a 

82 



THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR 

revolver and shot the man m the back. His victim 
fell and lay without moving. 

The great murderer went up to him leisurely and 
took from his clothes his money, watch, and a valu- 
able ring and cravat pin. He then rejoined me 
smiling calmly, and we continued our walk. 

Ten steps and we met a policeman running toward 
the spot where the shot had been fired. Avery 
Knight stopped him. 

'*I have just killed a man," he annoimced, seri- 
ously, "and robbed him of his possessions." 

"G'wan," said the policeman, angrily, ''or I'll run 
yez in! Want yer name in the papers, don't yez.^^ 
I never knew the cranks to come around so quick 
after a shootin' before. Out of th' park, now, for 
yours, or I'll fan yez." 

"What you have done," I said argumentatively, 
as Kiiight and I walked on, "was easy. But when 
you come to the task of hunting down the detec- 
tive that they send upon your trail you wiU find 
that you have undertaken a difficult feat." 

"Perhaps so," said Knight lightly. "I will admit 
that my success depends in a degree upon the sort 
of man they start after me. If it should be an ordi- 
nary plain-clothes man I might fail to gain a sight 
of him. If they honour me by giving the case to some 
one of their celebrated sleuths I do not fear to match 
my cunning and powers of induction against his." 

On the next afternoon Knight entered my office 
with a satisfied look on his keen countenance. 

83 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"How goes the mysterious murder?" I asked. 

"As usual," said Knight smilingly. "I have put 
in the morning at the police station and at the in- 
quest. It seems that a card case of mine contain- 
ing cards with my name and address was found near 
the body. They have three witnesses who saw the 
shooting and gave a description of me. The case 
has been placed in the hands of Shamrock Jolnes, 
the famous detective. He left Headquarters at 11 :30 
on the assignment. I waited at my address until 
two, thinking he might call there." 

I laughed tauntingly. 

"You will never see Jolnes," I continued, "until 
this murder has been forgotten, two or three weeks 
from now. I had a better opinion of your shrewdness. 
Knight. During the three hours and a half that 
you waited he has got out of your ken. He is after 
you on true induction theories now, and no wrongdoer 
has yet been known to come upon him while thus 
engaged. I advise you to give it up." 

"Doctor," said Knight, with a sudden glint in 
his keen gray eye and a squaring of his chin, "in 
spite of the record your city holds of something like 
a dozen homicides without a subsequent meeting of 
the perpetrator and the sleuth in charge of the case, 
I will undertake to break that record. To-morrow I 
will take you to Shamrock Jolnes — I will unmask 
him before you and prove to you that it is not an 
impossibility for an officer of the law and a man- 
slayer to stand face to face in your city." 

84 



THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR 

"Do it," said I, *'and you'll have the sincere 
thanks of the Police Department." 

On the next day Knight called for me in a cab. 

"I've been on one or two false scents, doctor," he 
admitted. "I know something of detectives' meth- 
ods, and I followed out a few of them, expecting 
to find Jolnes at the other end. The pistol being a 
.45-calibre, I thought surely I would find him at 
work on the clue in Forty-fifth Street. Then, again, 
I looked for the detective at the Columbia Univer- 
sity, as the man's being shot in the back naturally 
suggested hazing. But I could not find a trace of him." 

"Nor will you," I said emphatically. 

"Not by ordinary methods," said Knight. "I 
might walk up and down Broadway for a month 
without success. But you have aroused my pride, 
doctor; and if I fail to show you Shamrock Jolnes 
this day, I promise you I will never kill or rob in 
your city again." 

"Nonsense, man," I replied. "When our burglars 
walk into our houses and politely demand thousands 
of dollars' worth of jewels, and then dine and bang 
the piano an hour or two before leaving, how do 
you, a mere murderer, expect to come in contact 
with the detective that is looking for you?" 

Avery Kiiight sat lost in thought for a while. At 
length he looked up brightly. 

"Doc," said he, "I have it. Put on your hat, and 
come with me. In half an hour I guarantee that 
you shall stand in the presence of Shamrock Jolnes." 

85 



WAIFS AXD STRAYS 

I entered a cab with Aven- Knight. I did not hear 
his instructions to the driver, but the vehicle set 
out at a smart pace up Broadway, turning pres- 
ently into Fifth Avenue, and proceeding north- 
ward again. It was with a rapidly beating heart 
that I accompanied this wonderful and gifted as- 
sassin, whose analytical genius and superb self- 
confidence had prompted him to make me the tre- 
mendous promise of bringing me into the presence 
of a murderer and the Xew York detective in pur- 
suit of him simultaneously. Even yet I could not 
believe it possible. 

"Are you sure that you are not being led into 
some trap.^" I asked. "Suppose that your clue, 
whatever it is, should bring us only into the presence 
of the Commissioner of Police and a couple of dozen 
cops!" 

**!My dear doctor," said Knight, a little stiffly. 
"I would remind you that I am no gambler." 

"I beg your pardon," said I. "But I do not think 
vou will find Jolnes." 

The cab stopped before one of the handsomest 
residences on the avenue. Walking up and down 
in front of the house was a man with long red whisk- 
ers, with a detective's badge showing on the lapel 
of his coat. Xow and then the man would remove 
his whiskers to wipe his face, and then I would 
recognize at once the well-known features of the 
great Xew York detective. Jolnes was keeping a 
sharp watch upon the doors and windows of the house. 

86 



THE DETECTI\nE DETECTOR 

"Well, doctor," said Knight, unable to repress a 
note of triumph in his voice, *'have you seen?" 

"It is wonderful — wonderful!" I could not help 
exclaiming, as our cab started on its return trip. 
"But how did you do it? By what process of in- 
duction " 

"My dear doctor," interrupted the great mur- 
derer, "the inductive theory is what the detectives 
use. ' My process is more modern. I call it the 
saltatorial theory. Without bothering with the 
tedious mental phenomena necessary to the solution 
of a mystery from slight clues, I jump at once to a 
conclusion. I will explain to you the method I em- 
ployed in this case. 

"In the first place, I argued that as the crime 
was committed in New York City in broad daylight, 
in a public place and under peculiarly atrocious 
circumstances, and that as the most skiKul sleuth 
available was let loose upon the case, the perpe- 
trator would never be discovered. Do you not 
think my postulation justified by precedent?" 

"Perhaps so," I replied doggedly. "But if Big 
BiU Dev " 

"Stop that," interrupted Knight, with a smile. 
"I've heard that several times. It's too late now. 
I will proceed. 

"If homicides in New York went undiscovered, I 
reasoned, although the best detective talent was em- 
ployed to ferret them out, it must be true that the 
detectives went about their work in the wrong way. 

87 



WAIFS AXD STRAYS 

And not only in the wrong way, but exactly opposite 
from the right way. That was my clue. 

''T slew the man in Central Park. Now, let me 
describe mvself to vou. 

"I am tall, with a black beard, and I hate pub- 
licity. I have no money to speak of; I do not like 
oatmeal, and it is the one ambition of my life to die 
rich. I am of a cold and heartless disposition. I do 
not care for my fellow-men and I never give a cent 
to beggars or charity. 

" Now, my dear doctor, that Is the true description 
of myself, the man whom that shrewd detective was 
to himt down. You who are familiar with the his- 
tory of crime in New York of late should be able to 
foretell the result, ^lien I promised you to ex- 
hibit to your incredulous gaze the sleuth who was 
set upon me, you laughed at me because you said 
that detectives and murderers never met in New 
York. I have demonstrated to you that the theorv' 
is possible." 

'*But how did vou do it?" I asked a^ain. 

"It was very simple," replied the distinguished 
murderer. **T assumed that the detective would go 
exactly opposite to the clues he had. I have given 
you a description of myself. Therefore, he must nec- 

essarilv set to work and trail a short man with a 

1. 

white beard who likes to be in the papers, who is 
very wealthy, is fond of oatmeal, wants to die poor, 
and is of an extremely generous and philanthropic 
disposition. TMien thus far is reached the mind 

8S 



THE DETECTIVE DETECTOR 

hesitates no longer. I conveyed you at once to the 
spot where Shamrock Jolnes was pipmg off Andrew 
Carnegie's residence." 

"Knight," said I, "you're a wonder. If there was 
no danger of your reforming, what a roundsman 
you'd make for the Nineteenth Precinct!" 



89 



THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET* 

USUALLY it is a cold day in July when you 
can stroll up Broadway in that month and 
get a story out of the drama. I found one 
a few breathless, parboiling days ago, and it seems 
to decide a serious question in art. 

There was not a soul left in the city except Hollis 
and I — and two or three million sun-worshippers 
who remained at desks and counters. The elect 
had fled to seashore, lake, and mountain, and had 
already begun to draw for additional funds. Every 
evening Hollis and I prowled about the deserted 
town searching for coolness in empty cafes, dining- 
rooms, and roof -gardens. Vse knew to the tenth part 
of a revolution the speed of every electric fan in 
Gotham, and we followed the swiftest as they varied. 
HoUis's fiancee. Miss Loris Sherman, had been in 
the Adirondacks, at Lower Saranac Lake, for a 
month. In another week he would join her party 
there. In the meantime, he cursed the city cheer- 
fully and optimistically, and sought my society be- 
cause I suffered him to show me her photograph 
during the black coffee every time we dined to- 
gether. 

• This story has been rewritten and published in "Strictly Business" under the title. The Proof 
of the Pudding. 

90 



THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET 

My revenge was to read to him my one-act play. 

It was one insufferable evening when the overplus 
of the day's heat was being hurled quiveringly back 
to the heavens by every surcharged brick and stone 
and inch of iron in the panting town. But with the 
cunning of the two-legged beasts we had found an 
oasis where the hoofs of Apollo's steed had not been 
allowed to strike. Our seats were on an ocean of 
cool, polished oak; the white linen of fifty de- 
serted tables flapped like seagulls in the artificial 
breeze; a mile away a waiter lingered for a helio- 
graphic signal — we might have roared songs there 
or fought a duel without molestation. 

Out came Miss Loris's photo with the coffee, and 
I once more praised the elegant poise of the neck, 
the extremely low-coiled mass of heavy hair, and 
the eyes that followed one, like those in an oil paint- 
ing. 

"She's the greatest ever," said HoUis, with en- 
thusiasm. "Good as Great Northern preferred, and 
a disposition built like a watch. One week more 
and I'll be happy Johnny-on-the-spot. Old Tom 
Tolliver, my best college chum, went up there two 
weeks ago. He writes me that Loris doesn't talk 
about anything but me. Oh, I guess Rip Van 
Winkle didn't have all the good luck!" 

"Yes, yes," said I, hurriedly, pulling out my type- 
written play. "She's no doubt a charming girl. 
Now, here's that little curtain-raiser you promised 
to listen to." 

91 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"Ever been tried on the stage?" asked HoUis. 

"Not exactly," I answered. "I read half of it the 
other day to a fellow whose brother knows Robert 
Edeson; but he had to catch a train before I finished." 

"Go on," said HoUis, sliding back in his chair 
like a good fellow. "I'm no stage carpenter, but 
I'll tell you what I think of it from a first row bal- 
cony standpoint. I'm a theatre bug during the sea- 
son, and I can size up a fake play almost as quick 
as the gallery can. Flag the waiter once more, and 
then go ahead as hard as you like with it. I'll be 
the dog." 

I read my little play lovingly, and, I fear, not 
without some elocution. There was one scene in it 
that I believed in greatly. The comedy swiftly rises 
into thrilling and unexpectedly developed drama. 
Capt. Marchmont suddenly becomes cognizant that 
his wife is an unscrupulous adventuress, who has 
deceived him from the day of their first meeting. 
The rapid and mortal duel between them from that 
moment — she with her magnificent lies and siren 
charm, winding about him like a serpent, trying to 
recover her lost ground; he with his man's agony 
and scorn and lost faith, trying to tear her from 
his heart. That scene I always thought was a 
crackerjack. When Capt. Marchmont discovers 
her duplicity by reading on a blotter in a mirror 
the impression of a note that she has written to the 
Count, he raises his hand to heaven and exclaims: 
"O God, who created woman while Adam slept, 

92 



THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET 

and gave her to him for a companion, take back 
thy gift and return instead the sleep, though it last 
forever!" 

"Rot!" said HoUis, rudely, when I had given those 
lines with proper emphasis. 

"I beg your pardon!" I said as sweetly as I could. 

"Come now," went on Hollis, "don't be an idiot. 
You know very well that nobody spouts any stuff 
like that these days. That sketch went along all 
right until you rang in the skyrockets. Cut out 
that right-arm exercise and the Adam and Eve 
stunt, and make your captain talk as you or I or 
Bill Jones would." 

"I'll admit," said I, earnestly (for my theory was 
being touched upon), "that on all ordinary occasions 
all of us use commonplace language to convey our 
thoughts. You will remember that up to the mo- 
ment when the captain makes his terrible discovery 
all the characters on the stage talk pretty much as 
they would in real life. But I believe that I am 
right in allowing him lines suitable to the strong 
and tragic situation into which he falls." 

"Tragic, my eye!" said my friend irreverently. 
"In Shakespeare's day he might have sputtered out 
some high-cockalorum nonsense of that sort, be- 
cause in those days they ordered ham and eggs in 
blank verse and discharged the cook with an epic. 
But not for B'way in the summer of 1905 !" 

"It is my opinion," said I, "that great human 
emotions shake up our vocabulary and leave the 

93 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

words best suited to express them on top. A sudden 
violent grief or loss or disappointment will bring 
expressions out of an ordinary man as strong and 
solemn and dramatic as those used in fiction or on 
the stage to portray those emotions." 

"That's where you fellows are wrong," said HoUis. 
"Plain, every-day talk is what goes. Your captain 
would very likely have kicked the cat, lit a cigar, 
stirred up a highball, and telephoned for a lawyer, 
instead of getting ofiF those Robert Mantell pyro- 
technics." 

"Possibly, a little later," I continued. "But just 
at the time — just as the blow is delivered, if some- 
thing Scriptural or theatrical and deep-tongued 
isn't WTung from a man in spite of his modern and 
practical way of speaking, then I'm wrong." 

"Of course," said Mollis, kindly, "you've got to 
whoop her up some degrees for the stage. The 
audience expects it. WTien the villain kidnaps little 
Effie you have to make her mother claw some chunks 
out of the atmosphere, and scream: *Me chee-ild, 
me chee-ild ! ' TMiat she would actually do would be 
to call up the police by 'phone, ring for some strong 
tea, and get the little darling's photo out, ready for 
the reporters. When you get your villain in a corner 
— a stage corner — it's all right for him to clap his 
hand to his forehead and hiss: 'All is lost!' Off the 
stage he would remark: 'This is a conspiracy against 
me — I refer you to my lawyers.' " 

"I get no consolation," said I, gloomily, "from 

94 



THE DOG AND THE PLAYLET 

your concession of an accentuated stage treatment. 
In my play I fondly hoped that I was following life. 
If people in real life meet great crises in a common- 
place way, they should do the same on the stage." 

And then we drifted, like two trout, out of our 
cool pool in the great hotel and began to nibble 
languidly at the gay flies in the swift current of 
Broadway. And our question of dramatic art was 
unsettled. 

We nibbled at the flies, and avoided the hooks, as 
wise trout do; but soon the weariness of Manhattan 
in summer overcame us. Nine stories up, facing 
the south, was Hollis's apartment, and we soon 
stepped into an elevator bound for that cooler haven. 

I was familiar in those quarters, and quickly my 
play was forgotten, and I stood at a sideboard mixing 
things, with cracked ice and glasses all about me. 
A breeze from the bay came in the windows not al- 
together blighted by the asphalt furnace over which 
it had passed. Hollis, whistling softly, turned over 
a late-arrived letter or two on his table, and drew 
aroiuid the coolest wicker arm-chairs. 

I was just measuring the Vermouth carefully when 
I heard a sound. Some man's voice groaned hoarsely: 
"False, oh, God! — false, and Love is a lie and friend- 
ship but the byword of devils!" 

I looked around quickly, Hollis lay across the 
table with his head down upon his outstretched 
arms. And then he looked up at me and laughed in 
his ordinary manner. 

95 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

I knew him — he was poking fun at me about my 
theory. And it did seem so unnatural, those swell- 
ing words during our quiet gossip, that I half began 
to believe I had been mistaken — that my theory was 
wrong. 

Hollis raised himself slowly from the table. 

"You were right about that theatrical business, 
old man," he said, quietly, as he tossed a note to me. 

I read it. 

Loris had run away with Tom Tolliver. 



96 



A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS 

I SEE," remarked the tall gentleman in the frock 
coat and black slouch hat, "that another street 
car motorman in your city has narrowly escaped 
lynching at the hands of an infuriated mob by lighting 
a cigar and walking a couple of blocks down the 
street." 

"Do you think they would have lynched him?" 
asked the New Yorker, in the next seat of the ferry 
station, who was also waiting for the boat. 

"Not until after the election," said the tall man, 
cutting a corner off his plug of tobacco. "I've been 
in your city long enough to know something about 
your mobs. The motorman's mob is about the least 
dangerous of them all, except the National Guard 
and the Dressmakers' Convention. 

"You see, when little Willie Goldstein is sent by 
his mother for pigs' knuckles, with a nickel tightly 
grasped in his chubby fist, he always crosses the street 
car track safely twenty feet ahead of the car; and then 
suddenly turns back to ask his mother whether it was 
pale ale or a spool of 80 white cotton that she wanted. 
The motorman yells and throws himself on the brakes 
like a football player. There is a horrible grinding, 
and then a ripping sound, and a piercing shriek, 
and Willie is sitting, with part of his trousers 

97 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

torn away by the fender, screaming for his lost 
nickeh 

''In ten seconds the car is surrounded by 600 in- 
furiated citizens, crying, 'Lynch the motorman! 
Lynch the motorman!' at the top of their voices. 
Some of them run to the nearest cigar store to get a 
rope; but they find the last one has just been cut up 
and labelled. Hundreds of the excited mob press 
close to the cowering motorman, whose hand is ob- 
served to tremble perceptibly as he transfers a stick 
of pepsin gum from his pocket to his mouth. 

"WTien the bloodthirsty mob of maddened citi- 
zens has closed in on the motorman, some bringing 
camp stools and sitting quite close to him, and all 
shouting, 'Lynch him!' Policeman Fogarty forces 
his way through them to the side of their prospective 
victim. 

'"Hello, Mike,' says the motorman in a low voice, 
*nice day. Shall I sneak off a block or so, or would 
you like to rescue me.'^' 

"'Well, Jerry, if you don't mind,' says the police- 
man, 'I'd like to disperse the infuriated mob single- 
handed. I haven't defeated a lynching mob since 
last Tuesday; and that was a small one of only 300, 
that wanted to string up a Dago boy for selling wormy 
pears. It would boost me some down at the station.' 

"'All right, Mike,' says the motorman, 'anything 
to oblige. I'll turn pale and tremble.' 

"And he does so; and Policeman Fogarty draws 
his club and says, 'G'wan wid yez!' and in eight 

98 



A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS 

seconds the desperate mob has scattered and gone 
about its business, except about a hundred who re- 
main to search for WiUie's nickel." 

"I never heard of a mob in our city doing violence 
to a motorman because of an accident," said the New 
Yorker. 

"You are not liable to," said the tall man. "They 
know the motorman's all right, and that he wouldn't 
even run over a stray dog if he could help it. And 
they know that not a man among 'em would tie the 
knot to hang even a Thomas cat that had been tried 
and condemned and sentenced according to law." 

"Then why do they become infuriated and make 
threats of lynching.?" asked the New Yorker. 

"To assure the motorman," answered the tall man, 
" that he is safe. If they really wanted to do him up 
they would go into the houses and drop bricks on him 
from the third-story windows." 

"New Yorkers are not cowards," said the other 
man, a little stiffly. 

"Not one at a time," agreed the tall man promptly. 
"You've got a fine lot of single-handed scrappers in 
your town. I'd rather fight three of you than one; 
and I'd go up against all the Gas Trust's victims in a 
bunch before I'd pass two citizens on a dark corner, 
with my watch chain showing. When you get rounded 
up in a bunch you lose your nerve. Get you in 
crowds and you're easy. Ask the 'L' road guards 
and George B. Cortelyou and the tintype booths at 
Coney Island. Divided you stand, united you fall. 

99 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

E pluribus nihil. Whenever one of your mobs sur- 
rounds a man and begins to holler, 'Lynch him!' 
he says to himself, *0h, dear, I suppose I must look 
pale to please the boys, but I will, forsooth, let my 
life insurance premium lapse to-morrow. This is a 
sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the 
board in the next handicap.' 

"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner 
in the hands of New York policemen when an in- 
furiated mob demands that he be turned over to them 
for lynching. *For God's sake, officers,' cries the 
distracted wretch, 'have ye hearts of stone, that ye 
will not let them wrest me from ye?' 

"'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but 
it won't do. There's three of us — me and Darrell 
and the plain-clothes man; and there's only sivin 
thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the 
office if they took ye.^ Jist chase the infuriated aggre- 
gation around the corner, Darrell, and we'll be movin' 
along to the station.' " 

"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have 
not been so harmless," said the New Yorker, with 
a faint note of civic pride. 

"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin 
of mine who was on a visit here once had an arm 
broken and lost an ear in one of them." 

"That must have been during the Cooper Union 
riots," remarked the New Yorker. 

"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man — 
"but it was a union riot — at the Vanastor wedding." 

100 



A LITTLE TALK ABOUT MOBS 

"You seem to be in favour of lynch law," said the 
New Yorker severely. 

"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, 
sir, there are certain cases when the people rise in 
their just majesty and take a righteous vengeance 
for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am 
an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you 
that less than six months ago I myseK assisted at the 
lynching of one of that race that is creating a wide 
chasm between your section of country and mine, 
sir." 

"It is a deplorable condition," said the New 
Yorker, "that exists in the South, but " 

"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking 
another chew; "and I don't think you will condemn 
my course when I tell you that the coloured man in 
question had stolen $9.60 cents in cash, sir, from my 
own brother." 



101 



THE SNOW MAN 

Editorial Note. — Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter 
{known through his literary work as "0. Henry") this American master 
of short-story vyriting had begun for Hampton' s Magazine tlie story printed 
below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up 
writing about at the point where the girl enters the story. 

When he realized that he could do no more {it 2cas his life-long habit to 
write udth a pencil, never dictating to a stenographer), 0. Henry told in de- 
tail the remainder of The Snow Man to Harris Merton Lyon, whom he 
had often spoken of as one of the most effective short-story writers of the 
present time. Mr. Porter had delineated all of the characters, leaving only 
tlie rounding out of the plot in the final pages to Mr. Lyon. 

HOUSED and windowpaned from it, the great- 
est wonder to little children is the snow. To 
men, it is something like a crucible in which 
their world melts into a white star ten million miles 
away. The man who can stand the test is a Snow 
Man; and this is his reading by Fahrenheit, Reaumur, 
or Moses' carven tables of stone. 

Night had fluttered a sable pinion above the canon 
of Big Lost River, and I urged my horse toward the 
Bay Horse Ranch because the snow was deepening. 
The flakes were as large as an hour's circular tatting 
by Miss Wilkins' ablest spinster, betokening a heavy 
snowfall and less entertainment and more adventure 
than the completion of the tatting could promise. 
I knew Ross Curtis of the Bay Horse, and that I 
would be welcome as a snow-bound pilgrim, both for 
hospitality's sake and because Ross had few chances 

102 



THE SNOW MAN 

to confide in living creatures who did not neigh, bel- 
low, bleat, yelp, or howl, during his discourse. 

The ranch house was just within the jaws of the 
canon where its builder may have fatuously fancied 
that the timbered and rocky walls on both sides would 
have protected it from the wintry Colorado winds; 
but I feared the drift. Even now through the end- 
less, bottomless rift in the hills — the speaking tube 
of the four winds — came roaring the voice of the 
proprietor to the little room on the top floor. 

At my "hello," a ranch hand came from an outer 
building and received my thankful horse. In an- 
other minute, Ross and I sat by a stove in the dining- 
room of the four-room ranch house, while the big, 
simple welcome of the household lay at my disposal. 
Fanned by the whizzing norther, the fine, dry snow 
was sifted and bolted through the cracks and knot- 
holes of the logs. The cook room, without a separat- 
ing door, appended. 

In there I could see a short, sturdy, leisurely, and 
weather-beaten man moving with professional sure- 
ness about his red-hot stove. His face was stolid and 
imreadable — something like that of a great thinker, 
or of one who had no thoughts to conceal. I thought 
his eye seemed unwarrantably superior to the ele- 
ments and to the man, but quickly attributed that 
to the characteristic self-importance of a petty chef. 
"Camp cook" was the niche that I gave him in the 
Hall of Types; and he fitted it as an apple fits a 
dumpling. 

103 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Cold it was in spite of the glowing stove; and Ross 
and I sat and talked, shuddering frequently, half 
from nerves and half from the freezing draughts. 
So he brought the bottle, and the cook brought boil- 
ing water, and we made prodigious hot toddies against 
the attacks of Boreas. We clinked glasses often. 
They sounded like icicles dropping from the eaves, 
or like the tinkle of a thousand prisms on a Louis XIV 
chandelier that I once heard at a boarders' dance in 
the parlour of a ten-a-week boarding-house in Gram- 
ercy Square. Sic transit. 

Silence in the terrible beauty of the snow and of 
the Sphinx and of the stars; but they who believe 
that all things, from a without-wine table d'hote to 
the crucifixion, may be interpreted through music, 
might have found a nocturne or a symphony to 
express the isolation of that blotted-out world. The 
clink of glass and bottle, the aeolian chorus of the 
wind in the house crannies, its deeper trombone 
through the canon below, and the Wagnerian crash 
of the cook's pots and pans, united in a fit, discordant 
melody, I thought. No less welcome an accompani- 
ment was the sizzling of broiling ham and venison 
cutlets, indorsed by the solvent fumes of true Java, 
bringing rich promises of comfort to our yearning 
souls. 

The cook brought the smoking supper to the table. 
He nodded to me democratically as he cast the heavy 
plates around as though he were pitching quoits or 
hurling the discus. I looked at him with some ap- 

104 



THE SNOW IIAN 

praisement and curiosity, and much conciliation. 
There was no prophet to tell us when that drifting 
evil outside might cease to fall; and it is well, when 
snow-bound, to stand somewhere within the radius 
of the cook's favourable consideration. But I could 
read neither favour nor disapproval in the face and 
manner of our pot- wrestler. 

He was about five feet nine inches, and two hun- 
dred pounds of commonplace, bull-necked, pink- 
faced, callous calm. He wore brown duck trousers 
too tight and too short, and a blue flannel shirt with 
sleeves rolled above his elbows. There was a sort 
of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to 
me as though he had fixed it there purposely as a 
protection against the weakness of an inherent 
amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. 
And then I let supper usurp his brief occupancy of 
my thoughts. 

"Draw up, George," said Ross. "Let's all eat 
while the grub's hot." 

"You fellows go on and chew," answered the cook. 
"I ate mine in the kitchen before sundown." 

"Think it'll be a big snow, George.^^" asked the 
ranchman. 

George had turned to reenter the cook room. He 
moved slowly around and, looking at his face, it 
seemed to me that he was turning over the wisdom 
and knowledge of centuries in his head. 

"It might," was his delayed reply. 

At the door of the kitchen he stopped and looked 

105 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

back at us. Both Ross and I held our knives and 
forks poised and gave him our regard. Some men 
have the power of drawing the attention of others 
without speaking a word. Their attitude is more 
effective than a shout. 

"And again it mightn't," said George, and went 
back to his stove. 

After we had eaten, he came in and gathered the 
emptied dishes. He stood for a moment, with his 
spurious frowTi deepened. 

"It might stop any minute," he said, "or it might 
keep it up for days." 

At the farther end of the cook room I saw George 
pour hot water into his dishpan, hght his pipe, and 
put the tableware through its required lavation. 
He then carefully un^Tapped from a piece of old 
saddle blanket a paper-back book, and settled himself 
to read by his dim oil lamp. 

And then the ranchman threw tobacco on the 
cleared table and set forth again the bottles and 
glasses; and I saw that I stood in a deep channel 
through which the long dammed flood of his discourse 
would soon be booming. But I was half content, 
comparing my fate with that of the late Thomas 
Tucker, who had to sing for his supper, thus doubling 
the burdens of both himself and his host. 

"Snow is a hell of a thing," said Ross, by way of a 
foreword. "It ain't, somehow, it seems to me, salu- 
brious. I can stand water and mud and two inches 
below zero and a hundred and ten in the shade and 

106 



THE SNOW MAN 

medium-sized cyclones, but this here fuzzy white 
stuff naturally gets me all locoed. I reckon the 
reason it rattles you is because it changes the look 
of things so much. It's like you had a wife and left 
her in the morning with the same old blue cotton 
wrapper on, and rides in of a night and runs across 
her all outfitted in a white silk evening frock, waving 
an ostrich-feather fan, and monkeying with a posy 
of lily flowers. Wouldn't it make you look for your 
pocket compass? You'd be liable to kiss her before 
you collected your presence of mind." 

By and by, the flood of Ross's talk was drawn up 
into the clouds (so it pleased me to fancy) and there 
condensed into the finer snowflakes of thought; 
and we sat silent about the stove, as good friends and 
bitter enemies will do. I thought of Ross's preamble 
about the mysterious influence upon man exerted 
by that ermine-lined monster that now covered our 
little world, and knew he was right. 

Of all the curious knickknacks, mysteries, puzzles, 
Indian gifts, rat-traps, and well-disguised blessings 
that the gods chuck down to us from the Olympian 
peaks, the most disquieting and evil-bringing is the 
snow. By scientific analysis it is absolute beauty 
and purity — so, at the beginning we look doubtfully 
at chemistry. 

It falls upon the world, and lo ! we live in another. 
It hides in a night the old scars and familiar places 
with which we have grown heartsick or enamoured. 
So, as quietly as we can, we hustle on our embroidered 

107 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

robes and hie us on Prince Camaralzaman's horse or 
in the reindeer sleigh into the white country where 
the seven colours converge. This is when our fancy 
can overcome the bane of it. 

But in certain spots of the earth comes the snow- 
madness, made known by people turned wild and 
distracted by the bewildering veil that has obscured 
the only world they know. In the cities, the white 
fairy who sets the brains of her dupes whirling by a 
wave of her wand is cast for the comedy role. Her 
diamond shoe buckles glitter like frost; with a pirou- 
ette she invites the spotless carnival. 

But in the waste places the snow is sardonic. 
Sponging out the world of the outliers, it gives no 
foothold on another sphere in return. It makes of the 
earth a firmament under foot ; it leaves us clawing and 
stumbling in space in an inimical fifth element whose 
evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty. There 
Nature, low comedienne, plays her tricks on man. 
Though she has put him forth as her highest product, 
it appears that she has fashioned him with what seems 
almost incredible carelessness and indexterity. One- 
sided and without balance, with his two halves un- 
equally fashioned and joined, must he ever jog his 
eccentric way. The snow falls, the darkness caps it, 
and the ridiculous man-biped strays in accurate 
circles until he succumbs in the ruins of his defective 
architecture. 

In the throat of the thirsty the snow is vitriol. In 
appearance as plausible as the breakfast food of the 

108 



THE SNOW MAN 

angels, it is as hot in the mouth as ginger, increasing 
the pangs of the water-famished. It is a derivative 
from water, air, and some cold, uncanny fire from 
which the caloric has been extracted. Good has been 
said of it; even the poets, crazed by its spell and shiv- 
ering in their attics under its touch, have indited 
permanent melodies commemorative of its beauty. 

Still, to the saddest overcoated optimist it is a 
plague — a corroding plague that Pharaoh success- 
fully sidestepped. It beneficently covers the wheat 
fields, swelling the crop — and the Flour Trust gets 
us by the throat like a sudden quinsy. It spreads the 
tail of its white kirtle over the red seams of the 
rugged north — and the Alaskan short story is born. 
Etiolated perfidy, it shelters the mountain traveller 
burrowing from the icy air — and, melting to-morrow, 
drowns his brother in the valley below. 

At its worst it is lock and key and crucible, and 
the wand of Circe. When it corrals man in lonely 
ranches, mountain cabins, and forest huts, the snow 
makes apes and tigers of the hardiest. It turns the 
bosoms of weaker ones to glass, their tongues to 
infants' rattles, their hearts to lawlessness and spleen. 
It is not all from the isolation; the snow is not merely 
a blockader; it is a Chemical Test. It is a good 
man who can show a reaction that is not chiefly 
composed of a drachm or two of potash and magnesia, 
with traces of Adam, Ananias, Nebuchadnezzar, and 
the fretful porcupine. 

This is no story, you say; well, let it begin. 

109 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

There was a knock at the door (is the opening not 
full of context and reminiscence oh, best buyers of best 
sellers?). 

We drew the latch, and in stumbled fitienne Girod 
(as he afterward named himself). But just then he 
was no more than a worm struggling for life, en- 
veloped in a killing white chrysalis. 

We dug down through snow, overcoats, mufflers, 
and waterproofs, and dragged forth a living thing 
with a Van Dyck beard and marvellous diamond 
rings. We put it through the approved curriculum 
of snow-rubbing, hot milk, and teaspoonful doses of 
whisky, working him up to a graduating class en- 
titled to a diploma of three fingers of rye in half a 
glassful of hot water. One of the ranch boys had 
already come from the quarters at Ross's bugle-like 
yell and kicked the stranger's staggering pony to 
some sheltered corral where beasts were entertained. 

Let a paragraphic biography of Girod intervene. 

Etienne was an opera singer originally, we gathered ; 
but adversity and the snow had made him non compos 
vocis. The adversity consisted of the stranded San 
Salvador Opera Company, a period of hotel second- 
story work, and then a career as a professional 
palmist, jumping from town to town. For, like 
other professional palmists, every time he worked 
the Heart Line too strongly he immediately moved 
along the Line of Least Resistance. Though Etienne 
did not confide this to us, we surmised he had moved 
out into the dusk about twenty minutes ahead of a 

110 



THE SNOW IVIAN 

constable, and had thus encountered the snow. In 
his most sacred blue language he dilated upon the 
subject of snow; for Etienne was Paris-born and loved 
the snow with the same passion that an orchid does. 

" Mee-ser-rhable ! " commented Etienne, and took 
another three fingers. 

"Complete, cast-iron, pussy-footed, blank . . . 
blank!" said Ross, and followed suit. 

"Rotten," said I. 

The cook said nothing. He stood in the door, 
weighmg our outburst; and insistently from behind 
that frozen visage I got two messages (via the M. A. 
M. wireless). One was that George considered our 
vituperation against the snow childish; the other was 
that George did not love Dagoes. Inasmuch as 
Etienne was a Frenchman, I concluded I had the 
message wrong. So I queried the other: "Bright 
eyes, you don't really mean Dagoes, do you?" and 
over the wireless came three deathly, psychic taps: 
"Yes." Then I reflected that to George all foreigners 
were probably "Dagoes." I had once known an- 
other camp cook who had thought Mons., Sig. and 
Millie (Trans-Mississippi for Mile.) were Italian 
given names; this cook used to marvel therefore at 
the paucity of Neo-Roman precognomens, and there- 
fore why not 

I have said that snow is a test of men. For one 
day, two days, Etienne stood at the window, Flet- 
cherizing his finger nails and shrieking and moaning 
at the monotony. To me, Etienne was just about as 

111 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

unbearable as the snow; and so, seeking relief, I went 
out on the second day to look at my horse, slipped on 
a stone, broke my collarbone, and thereafter under- 
went not the snow test, but the test of flat-on-the- 
back. A test that comes once too often for any man 
to stand. 

However, I bore up cheerfully. I was now merely 
a spectator, and from my couch in the big room I 
could lie and watch the human interplay with that de- 
tached, impassive, impersonal feeling which French 
writers tell us is so valuable to the litterateur, and 
American writers to the faro-dealer. 

"I shall go crazy in this abominable, mee-ser- 
rhable place!" was Etienne's constant prediction. 

"Never knew Mark Twain to bore me before," 
said Ross, over and over. He sat by the other win- 
dow, hour after hour, a box of Pittsburg stogies of the 
length, strength, and odour of a Pittsburg graft 
scandal deposited on one side of him, and *' Roughing 
It," "The Jumping Frog," and "Life on the Mis- 
sissippi" on the other. For every chapter he lit a 
new stogy, puflBng furiously. This, in time, gave him 
a recurrent premonition of cramps, gastritis, smoker's 
colic, or w^hatever it is they have in Pittsburg after a 
too deep indulgence in graft scandals. To fend off 
the colic, Ross resorted time and again to Old Doctor 
Still's Amber-Coloured U. S. A. Colic Cure. Result, 
after forty -eight hours — nerves. 

"Positive fact I never knew Mark Twain to make 
me tired before. Positive fact." Ross slammed 

112 



THE SNOW MAN 

"Roughing It" on the floor. "When you're snow- 
bound this-away you want tragedy, I guess. Humour 
just seems to bring out all your cussedness. You 
read a man's poor, pitiful attempts to be funny and 
it makes you so nervous you want to tear the book up, 
get out your bandana, and have a good, long cry." 

At the other end of the room, the Frenchman took 
his finger nails out of his mouth long enough to 
exclaim: "Humour! Humour at such a time as 
thees! My God, I shall go crazy in thees abomi- 
nable " 

"Supper," announced George. 

These meals were not the meals of Rabelais who 
said, "the great God makes the planets and we make 
the platters neat." By that time, the ranch-house 
meals were not affairs of gusto; they were mental dis- 
traction, not bodily provender. What they were to 
be later shall never be forgotten by Ross or me or 
Etienne. 

After supper, the stogies and finger nails began 
again. My shoulder ached wretchedly, and with 
half -closed eyes I tried to forget it by watching the 
deft movements of the stolid cook. 

Suddenly I saw him cock his ear, like a dog. Then, 
with a swift step, he moved to the door, threw it 
open, and stood there. 

The rest of us had heard nothing. 

"What is it, George?" asked Ross. 

The cook reached out his hand into the darkness 
alongside the jamb. With careful precision he 

113 



WAIFS AXD STRAYS 

prodded something. Then he made one careful step 
into the snow. His back muscles bulged a little under 
the arms as he stooped and lightly lifted a burden. 
Another step inside the door, which he shut me- 
thodically behind him, and he dumped the burden 
at a safe distance from the fire. 

He stood up and fixed us with a solemn eye. None 
of us moved under that Orphic suspense until, 

"A woman/' remarked George. 

Miss TVillie Adams was her name. Vocation, 
school-teacher. Present avocation, getting lost in the 
snow. Age, yum-yum (the Persian for twenty). 
Take to the woods if you would describe Miss Adams. 
*A willow for grace; a hickory for fibre; a birch for the 
clear whiteness of her skin; for eyes, the blue sky 
seen through treetops; the silk in cocoons for her hair; 
her voice, the murmur of the evening June wind in the 
leaves; her mouth, the berries of the wintergreen; 
fingers as light as ferns; her toe as small as a deer 
track. General impression upon the dazed beholder 
— vou could not see the forest for the trees. 

Psychology, with a capital P and the foot of a 
lynx, at this juncture stalks into the ranch house. 
Three men, a cook, a pretty young woman — all snow- 
bound. Count me out of it, as I did not count, any- 
way. I never did, with women. Count the cook 
out, if you like. But note the effect upon Ross and 
Etienne Girod. 

Ross dumped Mark Twain in a trunk and locked 

114 



THE SNOW MAN 

the trunk. Also, he discarded the Pittsburg scandals. 
Also, he shaved oflF a three days' beard. 

Etienne, being French, began on the beard first. 
He pomaded it, from a little tube of grease Hongroise 
in his vest pocket. He combed it with a little 
aluminum comb from the same vest pocket. He 
trimmed it with manicure scissors from the same vest 
pocket. His light and Gallic spirits underwent a 
sudden, miraculous change. He hummed a blithe 
San Salvador Opera Company tune; he grinned, 
smirked, bowed, pirouetted, twiddled, twaddled, 
twisted, and tooralooed. Gayly, the notorious 
troubadour, could not have equalled Etienne. 

Ross's method of advance was brusque, domineer- 
ing. "Little woman," he said, "you're welcome 
here !"— and with what he thought subtle double mean- 
ing — "welcome to stay here as long as you like, snow 
or no snow." 

Miss Adams thanked him a little wildly, some of the 
wintergreen berries creeping into the birch bark. 
She looked around hurriedly as if seeking escape. 
But there was none, save the kitchen and the room 
allotted her. She made an excuse and disappeared 
into her own room. 

Later I, feigning sleep, heard the following: 

"Mees Adams, I was almos' to perish-dle-of monot- 
ony w'en your fair and beautiful face appear In thees 
mee-ser-rhable house." I opened my starboard 
eye. The beard was being curled furiously around a 
finger, the Sve^gali eye was rolling, the chair was 

115 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

being hunched closer to the school-teacher's. ''I am 
French — ^\^ou see — temperamental — nervous! I can- 
not endure thees dull hours in thees ranch house; but — 
a woman comes! Ah!" The shoulders gave nine 
'rahs and a tiger. "\Miat a difference! All is light 
and gay; ever'ting smile w'en you smile. You have 
'eart, beauty, grace. My 'eart comes back to me 
w'en I feel your 'eart. So!" He laid his hand 
upon his vest pocket. From this vantage point he 
suddenly snatched at the school-teacher's own hand. 
"Ah! Mees Adams, if I could only tell you how I 
ad " 

"Dinner," remarked George. He was standing 
just behind the Frenchman's ear. His eyes looked 
straight into the school-teacher's eyes. After thirty 
seconds of survey, his lips moved, deep in the flinty, 
frozen maelstrom of his face: "Dinner," he con- 
cluded, "will be ready in two minutes." 

Miss Adams jumped to her feet, relieved. "I 
must get ready for dinner," she said brightly, and 
went into her room. 

Ross came in fifteen minutes late. After the dishes 
had been cleaned away, I waited until a propitious 
time when the room was temporarily ours alone, and 
told him what had happened. 

He became so excited that he lit a stogy without 
thinking. "Yeller-hided, unwashed, palm-readin' 
skunk," he said under his breath. "I'll shoot him 
full o' holes if he don't watch out — talkin' that way 
to my wife!" 

116 



THE SNOW MAN 

I gave a jump that set my collarbone back another 
week. "Your wife!" I gasped. 

"Well, I mean to make her that," he announced. 

The air in the ranch house the rest of that day was 
tense with pent-up emotions, oh, best buyers of best 
sellers. 

Ross watched Miss Adams as a hawk does a hen; 
he watched Etienne as a hawk does a scarecrow. 
Etienne watched Miss Adams as a weasel does a 
henhouse. He paid no attention to Ross. 

The condition of Miss Adams, in the role of sought- 
after, was feverish. Lately escaped from the agony 
and long torture of the white cold, where for hours Na- 
ture had kept the little school-teacher's vision locked 
in and turned upon herself, nobody knows through 
what profound, feminine introspections she had gone. 
Now, suddenly cast among men, instead of finding 
relief and security, she beheld herself plunged anew 
into other discomforts. Even in her own room she 
could hear the loud voices of her imposed suitors. 
"I'll blow you full o' holes!" shouted Ross. "Wit- 
nesses," shrieked Etienne, waving his hand at the 
cook and me. She could not have known the pre- 
vious harassed condition of the men, fretting under 
indoor conditions. All she knew was, that where she 
had expected the frank freemasonry of the West, she 
found the subtle tangle of two men's minds, bent 
upon exacting whatever romance there might be in 
her situation. 

She tried to dodge Ross and the Frenchman by 

117 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

spells of nursing me. They also came over to help 
nurse. This combination aroused such a natural 
state of invalid cussedness on my part that they all 
were forced to retire. Once she did manage to whis- 
per: **I am so worried here. I don't know what to 
do." 

To which I replied, gently, hitching up my shoulder, 
that I was a hunch-savant and that the Eighth House 
under this sign, the Moon being in Virgo, showed 
that everything would turn out all right. 

But twenty minutes later I saw Etienne reading her 
palm and felt that perhaps I might have to recast her 
horoscope, and try for a dark man coming with a 
bundle. 

Toward sunset, Etienne left the house for a few 
moments and Ross, who had been sitting taciturn 
and morose, having unlocked Mark Twain, made 
another dash. It was t;^^ical Ross talk. 

He stood in front of her and looked down majesti- 
cally at that cool and perfect spot where Miss Adams' 
forehead met the neat part in her fragrant hair. 
First, however, he cast a desperate glance at me. I 
was in a profound slumber. 

"Little woman," he began, "it's certainly tough 
for a man like me to see you bothered this way. 
You" — gulp — "you have been alone m this world too 
long. You need a protector. I might say that at a 
time like this you need a protector the worst kind — 
a protector who would take a three-ring delight in 
smashing the saffron-coloured kisser off of any yeller- 

118 



THE SNOW MAN 

skinned skunk that made himseK obnoxious to you. 
Hem. Hem. I am a lonely man, Miss Adams. I 
have so far had to carry on my life without the" — 
gulp — " sweet radiance " — gulp — " of a woman around 
the house. I feel especially doggoned lonely at a 
time like this, when I am pretty near locoed from 
havin' to stall indoors, and hence it was with delight 
I welcomed your first appearance in this here shack. 
Since then I have been packed jam full of more dif- 
ferent kinds of feelings, ornery, mean, dizzy, and 
superb, than has fallen my way in years." Miss 
Adams made a useless movement toward escape. 
The Ross chin stuck firm. "I don't want to annoy 
you. Miss Adams, but, by heck, if it comes to that 
you'll have to be annoyed. And I'll have to have 
my say. This palm-ticklin' slob of a Frenchman 
ought to be kicked off the place and if you'll say the 
word, off he goes. But I don't want to do the wrong 
thing. You've got to show a preference. I'm get- 
tin' around to the point, Miss — Miss Willie, in my 
own brick fashion. I've stood about all I can stand 
these last two days and somethin's got to happen. 
The suspense hereabouts is enough to hang a sheep- 
herder. Miss Willie" — ^he lassooed her hand by 
main force — "just say the word. You need some- 
body to take your part all your life long. Will you 
mar 

"Supper," remarked George, tersely, from the 
kitchen door. 

Miss Adams hurried away. 

119 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 
Ross turned angrily. "You " 



**I have been revolving it in my head," said George. 

He brought the coffeepot forward heavily. Then 
gravely the big platter of pork and beans. Then 
sombrely the potatoes. Then profoundly the bis- 
cuits. "I been revolving it in my mind. There ain't 
no use waitin' any longer for Swengalley. Might as 
well eat now." 

From my excellent vantage-point on the couch I 
watched the progress of that meal. Ross muddled, 
glowering, disappointed; Etienne, eternally blandish- 
ing, attentive, ogling; Miss Adams nervous, picking 
at her food, hesitant about answering questions, al- 
most hysterical; now and then the solid, flitting 
shadow of the cook, passing behind their backs like 
a Dreadnaught in a fog. 

I used to own a clock which gurgled in its throat 
three minutes before it struck the hour. I know, 
therefore, the slow freight of Anticipation. For I 
have awakened at three in the morning, heard the 
clock gurgle and waited those three minutes for the 
three strokes I knew were to come. Alors. In 
Ross's ranch house that night the slow freight of 
Climax whistled in the distance. 

Etienne began it after supper. Miss Adams had 
suddenly displayed a lively interest in the kitchen 
layout and I could see her in there, chatting brightly 
at George — not with him — the while he ducked his 
head and rattled his pans. 

"My fren'," said Etienne, exhaling a large cloud 

120 



THE SNOW MAN 

from his cigarette and patting Ross lightly on the 
shoulder with a bediamonded hand which hung limp 
from a yard or more of bony arm, ''I see I mus' be 
frank with you. Firs', because we are rivals; second, 
because you take these matters so serious. I — I am 
Frenchman. I love the women" — he threw back 
his curls, bared his yellow teeth, and blew an un- 
savory kiss toward the kitchen. '*It is, I suppose, 
a trait of my nation. All Frenchmen love the women 
— ^pretty women. Now, look: Here I am!" He 
spread out his arms. '^Cold outside! I detes' the 
col-l-l'! Snow! I abominate the mees-ser-rhable 
snow! Two men! This" — pointing to me — *'an' 
this!" Pointing to Ross. ''I am distracted! For 
two whole days I stan' at the window an' tear my 
'air! I am nervous, upset, pr-r-ro-foun'ly distress 
inside my 'ead! An' suddenly — be'old! A woman, 
a nice, pretty, charming, innocen' young woman ! I, 
naturally, rejoice. I become myself again — gay, 
light-'earted, 'appy. I address myseK to made- 
moiselle; it passes the time. That, m'sieu', is wot 
the women are for — pass the time ! Entertainment — 
like the music, like the wine ! 

"They appeal to the mood, the caprice, the tem- 
peramen'. To play with thees woman, follow her 
through her hmnour, pursue her — ah! that is the 
mos' delightful way to sen' the hours about their busi- 
ness." 

Ross banged the table. "Shut up, you miserable 
yeller pup!" he roared. "I object to your pursuin' 

121 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

anything or anybody in my house. Now, you listen 

to me, you " He picked up the box of stogies 

and used it on the table as an emphasizer. The noise 
of it awoke the attention of the girl in the kitchen. 
Unheeded, she crept into the room. "I don't know 
anything about your French ways of lovemakin', 
an' I don't care. In my section of the coiuitry, it's 
the best man wins. And I'm the best man here, and 
don't you forget it! This girl's goin' to be mine. 
There ain't going to be any playing, or philandering, 
or palm reading about it. I've made up my mind 
I'll have this girl, and that settles it. My word is 
the law in this neck o' the woods. She's mine and 
as soon as she says she's mine, you pull out." The 
box made one final, tremendous punctuation point. 

Etienne's bravado was unruffled. *'Ah! that is no 
way to win a woman," he smiled, easily. "I make 
prophecy you will never win 'er that way. No. Not 
thees woman. She mus' be played along an' then 
keessed, this charming, delicious little creature. One 
keess! An' then you 'ave her." Again he displayed 
his unpleasant teeth. "I make you a bet I will keess 
her " 

As a cheerful chronicler of deeds done well, it joys 
me to relate that the hand which fell upon Etienne's 
amorous lips was not his own. There was one sudden 
sound, as of a mule kicking a lath fence, and then — 
through the swinging doors of oblivion for Etienne. 

I had seen this blow delivered. It was an aloof, 
imstudied, almost absent-minded affair. I had 

122 



THE SNOW MAN 

thought the cook was rehearsing the proper method 
of turning a flapjack. 

Silently, lost in thought, he stood there scratching 
his head. Then he began rolling down his sleeves. 

"You'd better get your things on. Miss, and we'll 
get out of here," he decided. "Wrap up warm." 

I heard her heave a little sigh of relief as she went 
to get her cloak, sweater, and hat. 

Ross jumped to his feet, and said: "George, 
what are you goin' to do.^^" 

George, who had been headed in my direction, 
slowly swivelled around and faced his employer. 
"Bein' a camp cook, I ain't overburdened with 
hosses," George enlightened us. "Therefore, I am 
going to try to borrow this feller's here." 

For the first time in four days my soul gave a 
genuine cheer. "If it's for Lochinvar purposes, go 
as far as you like," I said grandly. 

The cook studied me a moment, as If trying to find 
an insult in my words. "No," he replied. "It's 
for mine and the young lady's purposes, and we'll go 
only three miles — to HlcksvIUe. Now let me tell 
you somethin', Ross." Suddenly I was confronted 
with the cook's chunky back and I heard a low, curt 
carrying voice shoot through the room at my host. 
George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. 
"You're nutty. That's what's the matter with you. 
You can't stand the snow. You're gettin' nervouser 
and nuttier every day. That and this Dago" — 
he jerked a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in 

1£3 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

the corner — **has got you to the point where I 
thought I better horn in. I got to revolvin' it 
around in my mind and I seen if somethin' wasn't 
done, and done soon, there'd be murder around here 
and maybe" — his head gave an imperceptible Hst 
toward the girl's room — '* worse." 

He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep 
any one else from speaking. Then he plowed slowly 
through the drift of his ideas. "About this here 
woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you 
reely think about women. If she hadn't happened 
in here durin' this here snow, you'd never have given 
two thoughts to the whole vroman question. Like- 
wise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys 
go hustlin' out, this here whole business '11 clear out 
of your head and you won't think of a skirt again 
until Kingdom Come. Just because o' this snow 
here, don't forget you're livin' in the selfsame world 
you was in four days ago. And you're the same man, 
too. Now, what's the use o' gettin' all snarled up 
over four davs of stickin' in the house? That there's 
what I been revolvin' in my mind and this here 's the 
decision I've come to." 

He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the 
ranch hands to saddle my horse. 

Ross lit a stog}^ and stood thoughtful in the middle 
of the room. Then he began: "I've a durn good 
notion, George, to knock your confounded head off 
and throw you into that snowbank, if " 

"You're wrong, mister. That ain't a durned good 

124 



THE SNOW MAN 

notion you've got. It's durned bad. Look here!" 
He pointed steadily out of doors until we were both 
forced to follow his finger. *' You're in here for 
more'n a week yet." After allowing this fact to 
sink in, he barked out at Ross: ''Can you cook.^" 
Then at me: "Can 2/02^ cook?" Then he looked at 
the wreck of Etienne and sniflfed. 

There was an embarrassing silence as Ross and I 
thought solemnly of a foodless week. 

''If you just use hoss sense," concluded George, 
"and don't go for to hurt my feelin's, all I want to do 
is to take this young gal down to Hicksville; and then 
I'll head back here and cook fer you." 

The horse and Miss Adams arrived simultaneously, 
both of them very serious and quiet. The horse 
because he knew what he had before him in that 
weather; the girl because of what she had left behind. 

Then aU at once I awoke to a realization of what 
the cook was doing. "My God, man!" I cried, 
"aren't you afraid to go out in that snow.^^" 

Behind my back I heard Ross mutter, "Not him." 

George lifted the girl daintily up behind the saddle, 
drew on his gloves, put his foot in the stirrup, and 
turned to inspect me leisurely. 

As I passed slowly in his review, I saw in my mind's 
eye the algebraic equation of Snow, the equals sign, 
and the answer in the man before me. 

"Snow is my last name," said George. He swung 
into the saddle and they started cautiously out into 
the darkening swirl of fresh new currency just issuing 

125 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

from the Snowdrop Mint. The girl, to keep her 
place, clung happily to the sturdy figure of the camp 
cook. 

I brought three things away from Ross Curtis' s 
ranch house — yea, four. One was the appreciation 
of snow, which I have so humbly tried here to render; 

(2) was a collarbone, of which I am extra careful; 

(3) was a memory of what it is to eat very extremely 
terribly bad food for a week; and (4) was the cause of 
(3) a little note delivered at the end of the week and 
hand-painted in blue pencil on a sheet of meat paper. 

** I cannot come back there to that there job. Mrs. 
Snow say no, George. I been revolvin' it in my 
mind; considerin' circumstances she's right." 



ne 



PART II 

CRITICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL 
COMMENT 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 
By Arthur W. Page 

Part I — Born and Raised in No'th Ca'lina 

IN GREENSBORO, North Carolina, at the time 
of Will Porter's youth there were four classes of 
people: decent white folks, mean white folks, 
decent ''niggers," and mean ''niggers." Will Porter 
and his people belonged to the first class. During the 
time that he was growing up there were about twenty- 
five hundred people in Greensboro. It was a simple, 
democratic little place with rather more intellectual 
ambitions than most places of its size, but without 
the hum of modern industry which the cotton mills 
have latterly brought to it or the great swarm of eager 
students that now flock to the State Normal School. 

In this quiet and pleasant community William 
Sydney Porter grew up. Algernon Sidney Porter, 
his father, was a doctor of skill and distinction, who 
In late life practised his profession little, but worked 
upon many inventions. His mother is said to have 
written poetry and her father was at one time editor 
of the Greensboro Patriot. A President, a planter, 
a banker, a blacksmith, a short-story writer or a 
sailor might any of them have such forbears as these. 

If any dependence can be laid upon early "in- 

129 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

fluences" that affect an author's work, in O. Henry's 
case we must certainly consider Aunt **Lina" Porter. 
She attended to his bringing up at home and he at- 
tended her instruction at school. His mother died 
when Will Porter was very young, and his aunt, Miss 
Evelina Porter, ran the Porter household as well as the 
school next door, and a most remarkable school it was. 

Porter's desk-mate in that school, Tom Tate, not 
long ago wrote the following account, for his niece to 
read: 

"Miss Porter was a maiden lady and conducted 
a private school on West Market Street, in Greens- 
boro, adjoining the Porter residence. Will was edu- 
cated there, and this was his whole school education 
(with the exception of a term or two at graded school). 
There was a great deal more learned in this little one- 
story, one-roomed school house than the three R's. 
It was the custom of * Miss Lina,' as every one called 
her, during the recess hour to read aloud to those of 
her scholars who cared to hear her, and there was 
always a little group around her chair listening. She 
selected good books, and a great many of her old 
scholars showed the impress of these little readings in 
after life. On Friday night there was a gathering of 
the scholars at her home, and those were good times, 
too. They ate roasted chestnuts, popped corn or 
barbecued quail and rabbits before the big open wood 
fire in her room. There was always a book to read 
or a story to be told. Then there was a game of 
story-telling, one of the gathering would start the 

130 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

story and each one of the others was called on in turn 
to add his quota until the end. Miss Lina's and 
Will's were always interesting. In the summer time 
there were picnics and fishing expeditions; in the 
autumn chinquapin and hickory gatherings; and in 
the spring wild-flower hunts, all personally conducted 
by Miss Lina. 

"During these days Will showed decided artistic 
talent, and it was predicted that he would follow in 
the footsteps of his kinsman, Tom Worth, the car- 
toonist, but the literary instinct was there, too, and 
the quaint dry humour and the keen insight into the 
peculiarities of human nature. 

"The boys of the school were divided in two clubs, 
the Brickbats and the Union Jacks. The members 
of the Union Jacks were Percy Gray, Will Porter, Jim 
Doak, and Tom Tate, three of whom died before 
reaching middle age. Tom Tate is the sole survivor 
of this little party of four. 

"This club had headquarters in an outbuilding on 
the grounds of the old Edgeworth Female College, 
which some years previously had been destroyed by 
fire. In this house they kept their arms and accou- 
trements, consisting of wooden battle-axes, shields, 
and old cavalry sabres, and on Friday nights it was 
their custom to sally forth armed and equipped in 
search of adventure, like knights of old from their 
castle, carefully avoiding the dark nooks where the 
moonlight did not fall. Will was the leading spirit 
In these daring pursuits, and many was the halr- 

131 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

raising adventure these ten-year-old heroes encount- 
ered, and the shields and battle-axes were oft-times 
thrown aside so as not to impede the free action of 
the nether limbs when safety lay only in flight. 
Ghosts were of common occurrence in those days, or 
rather nights, and arms were useless to cope with the 
supernatural; it took good sturdy legs. 

"In the summer an occasional banquet was spread 
on the moss and grass under the spreading branches 
of the old oaks that surrounded the club house. On 
one such festal gathering ginger cakes and lemonade 
constituted the refreshments. The lemonade was 
made in a tub furnished by Percy Gray, and during 
the after-dinner talks one of the Sir Kjiights impru- 
dently asked if the tub was a new one, and Percy 
replied in an injured tone: '^Miy, of course it is; 
papa has only bathed in it three times.' To use an 
old quotation, *Ah! then and there was hurrying to 
and fro and blanching of red lips and so forth.' . . . 

"After the short school-days Porter found em- 
ployment as prescription clerk in the drugstore of his 
uncle, Clarke Porter, and it was there that his genius 
as an artist and writer budded forth and gave the 
first promise of the work of after years. The old 
Porter drugstore was the social club of the town in 
those days. A game of chess went on in the back 
room always, and around the old stove behind the 
prescription counter the judge, the colonel, the doctor, 
and other local celebrities gathered and discussed af- 
fairs of state, the fate of nations, and other things, and 

132 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

incidentally helped themselves to liberal portions of 
Clarke's Vini Gallaci or smoked his cigars without 
money and without price. There were some rare 
characters who gathered around that old stove, some 
queer personalities, and Porter caught them and 
transferred them to paper by both pen and pencil 
in an illustrated comedy satire that was his first public 
literary and artistic efiFort. 

"\\Tien this was read and shown around the stove 
the picture was so true to life and caught the pecu- 
liarities of the dramatis personce so aptly it was some 
time before the young playwright was on speaking 
terms with some of his old friends. 'Alias Jimmy 
Valentine's' hit* is history now, but I doubt if at any 
time there was a more genuine tribute to Porter's 
abUity than from the audience around the old stove, 
behind the prescription counter nearly thirty years 
ago. 

"In those days Sunday was a day of rest, and Por- 
ter with a friend would spend the long afternoons out 
on some sunny hillside sheltered from the wind by 
the thick brown broom sedge, lying on their backs 
gazing up into the blue sky dreaming, planning, 
talking, or turning to their books, reading. He was 
an ardent lover of God's great out-of-doors, a dreamer, 
a thinker, and a constant reader. He was such a man 
— true-hearted and steadfast to those he cared for, 
as gentle and sensitive as a woman, retiring to a fault, 
pure, clean, and honourable." 



• This play is the dramatized version of A Retrieved Reformation. (See "Roads of Destiny.") 

100 
00 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

In these characteristics Will Porter followed In his 
father's footsteps. It was a saying In Greensboro 
that if there were cushioned seats In Heaven old Dr. 
Porter would have one, because of his charity and 
goodness to the poor. And there was an active sym- 
pathy between the old man and his son. The old 
gentleman on cold stormy nights when his boy was 
late getting home from the drugstore always had a 
roaring wood fire for him, and a pot of coffee and 
potatoes and eggs warming in the fire for his midnight 
supper. 

This timid, quiet lad, who would slip around to the 
back door of Miss **Lina's," if there was company in 
the front of the house, held a little court of his own 
at the drugstore. He was the delight and pride of 
men two and three times his age. They still talk 
of the pictures he drew, the quiet pranks he played; 
but their greatest pride In him, as Indicated above, 
is as a playwright. If you find one of that group 
now, and speak of O. Henry he will ask: *'Did you 
ever hear of the play Will wrote when he was six- 
teen.^" and then he will launch Into laughing descrip- 
tion of the little play written thirty-five years 



ago. 



His pencil was busy most of the time. If not with 
writing, with drawing. He was a famous cartoonist. 
There are several versions of the story about him and 
an important customer at his uncle's store. Young 
Porter did not remember the customer's name, but 
when the man asked him to charge some articles he 

134 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

did not wish to admit his Ignorance. So he put down 
the items and drew a picture of the customer. His 
uncle had no difficulty In recognizing the likeness. 
Perhaps one of the other versions of this story Is the 
true one, but as they all unite upon the fact that he 
made a likeness that was accurate enough for his 
uncle to base his accounts upon, we may be certain 
that during his drug-store-club days young Porter 
was an adept at pencil mimicry as well as personal 
playwrltlng. It is as certain, too, that he dearly 
loved practical jokes. According to Mr. Charles 
Benbow, of Greensboro, "there was an old darkey by 
the name of Pink Lindsay who swept out the drug- 
store, made fires, and so forth. He was very fond of 
whiskey, and It took great care on the part of Will 
Porter and Ed Michaux, clerks, to keep Pink away 
from the whiskey used in prescriptions. They had a 
barrel of whiskey in the cellar and used a rubber tube 
to syphon the whiskey out of the barrel into a big 
bottle which was kept at the prescription counter. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the rubber tube was 
kept under lock and key old Pink or somebody was 
getting the whiskey. One day Will was in the cellar 
having Pink clean up the rubbish, and while sweep- 
ing down cobwebs he discovered two long straws hid 
on the wall of earth near the whiskey barrel. He said 
nothing. When Pink was out he examined the barrel 
and discovered a small hole bored Into the top near 
the end of the cask. Immediately he divined how 
and where the whiskey went. He quietly took the 

135 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

straws upstairs and filled them with capsicum. 
He put them back exactly where he had found them. 
In those days we did not need pure food laws — 
capsicum was red pepper genuine. Pink was kept 
out of the cellar all day. The next morning being a 
cold one, Pink was both dry and cold. When Will 
sent him down cellar he was more than ready to 
comply. The cellar door opened out on the sidewalk 
and was one of those folding doors that when closed 
down act as a part of the sidewalk. It is usually 
closed as one goes down cellar. This time Pink 
happened to leave it open, and it was well for him. 
A few minutes elapsed and he let out a howl that 
would have done credit to a Comanche Indian. Yell- 
ing that he was poisoned, he made a bee line for the 
pump out in the street. Will pumped water for him 
until he could talk, and then he pumped the truth 
out of Pink about the straws. He was 'pizened,' and 
he was afire, and he promised never to use the straws 
again. All the while Will was as sober as a judge. 
He never smiled, and Pink did not suspect him." 

In 1882 Dr. and Mrs. J. K. Hall went to Texas to 
visit their sons, Richard and Lee Hall, of Texas-ranger 
fame, and Will Porter was sent with them, because 
it was thought that the close confinement in the drug- 
store was undermining his health. He never again 
lived in Greensboro, but Greensboro was never alto- 
gether out of his mind. Many years later, when he 
was living in New York, he wrote this account of 
himself — ^an account which gives an inkling of the 

136 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

whimsical charm of the man and his fondness for the 
old life in the old land of his birth. 

"I take my pen in hand to say that I am from the 
South and have been a stranger in New York for four 
years. I am sometimes full of sunshine and at 
other times about as cross and disagreeable as you 
ever see 'em. But I know a restaurant where you 
can get real Corn Bread, clean, respectable, cozy, 
and draw the line at two things. I will not go to 
Coney Island and will not take walks on Sunday 
afternoons. 

"It's a hard task to tell about one's self, for if you 
say too much you get turned down for an egoist, and 
if you don't say enough the man with the black 
moustache and side-bar buggy gets ahead of you. 

"Now for something very personal and thrilling. 
It's about me." 

{Tlie following paragraph was cut from a newspaper 
and pasted on the letter.) 

"'He is a true soldier of fortune. He is still a 
very young man, but he has lived a varied life. He 
has been a cowboy, sheepherder, merchant, salesman, 
miner, and a great many other nameless things in the 
course of a number of very full years spent doing our 
West, Southwest, Mexico, South and Central Amer- 
ica. He went about with a keen eye and supple- 
mented it with a ready notebook, into which .he 
jotted down his impressions and things that hap- 
pened his way. ' 

"There are a few misstatements in the excerpt. 

137 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

I am not a Very 5"oung man.' Wish I was. I have 
never been a cowboy, sheepherder, merchant, sales- 
man, or miner. But I lived 'on the ground' with 
cowboys for two years. I never carried a notebook 
in my life. But here I plead guilty." 

{Here follows another newspaper clipping.) 

"*He carried an abundant good fellowship and 
humour with him and saw the bright and amusing 
side of things. ' 

"Don't forget that I am the only original dispenser 
of sunshine. 

"You may notice that I suppress my pen name in 
the quotations. I do that because I have been try- 
ing to keep my personality separate from my nom 
de guerre except from my intimate friends and 
publishers. 

"I was born and raised in *No'th Ca'lina' and at 
eighteen went to Texas and ran wild on the prairies. 
Wild yet, but not so wild. Can't get to loving New 
Yorkers. Live all alone in a great big two rooms on 
quiet old Irving Place three doors from Wash. Irv- 
ing's old home. Kind of lonesome. Was thinking 
lately (since the April moon commenced to shine) 
how I'd like to be down South, where I could happen 
over to Miss Ethel's or Miss Sallie's and sit on the 
porch — not on a chair — on the edge of the porch, and 
lay my straw hat on the steps and lay my head back 
against the honeysuckle on the post — and just talk. 
And Miss Ethel would go in directly (they say pres- 
ently up here) and bring out the guitar. She would 

138 



LITTLE PICTURES OF 0. HENRY 

complain that the E string was broken, but no one 
would believe her, and pretty soon all of us would be 
singing the 'Swanee River' and 'In the Evening by 
the Moonlight' and — oh, gol darn it, what's the use 
of wishing." 

Part II — ^Texan Days 

Will Porter found a new kind of life in Texas — a 
life that filled his mind with that rich variety of types 
and adventures which later was translated into his 
stories. Here he got — ^from observation, and not 
from experience, as has often been said, for he was 
never a cowboy — the originals of his Western char- 
acters and Western scenes. He looked on at the more 
picturesque life about him rather than shared in it; 
though through his warm sympathy and his vivid 
imagination he entered into its spirit as completely 
as any one who had fully lived its varied parts. 

It was while he was living on the Hall ranch, to 
which he had gone in search of health, that he wrote 
— and at once destroyed — ^his first stories of Western 
life. And it was there, too, that he drew the now 
famous series of illustrations for a book that never 
was printed. The author of that book, "Uncle Joe" 
Dixon, was a prospector in the bonanza mining days 
in Colorado. Now he is a newspaper editor in Flor- 
ida; and he has lately told, for the survivors of Will 
Porter's friends of that period, the story of the origin 
of these drawings. His narrative illustrates anew 
the remarkable impression that Will Porter's quaint 

139 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

and whimsical personality, even in his boyhood, made 
upon those who knew him. 

Other friends, who knew him more intimately than 
''Uncle Joe" Dixon, saw other sides of Will Porter's 
character. With them his boyish love of fun and of 
good-natured and sometimes daredevil mischief came 
again to the surface, as well as those refinements of 
feeling and manner that were his heritage as one of 
the "decent white folks" of Greensboro. And with 
them, too, came out the ironical fate that pursued 
him most of his life — to be a dreamer and yet to be 
harnessed to tasks that brought his head from the 
clouds to the commonplaces of the store and the 
street. Perhaps it was this very bending of a sky- 
seeking imagination to the dusty comedy of every 
day that brought him later to see life as he pictured 
it in "The Four Million," with its mingling of Caliph 
Haroun-al-Raschid's romance with the adventures 
of shop girls and restaurant-keepers. At any rate, 
even the Texas of the drug-clerk days and of the 
bank-clerk period appealed to his sense of the hum- 
orous and romantic and grotesque. Here is what 
one intimate of those days recalls of his character 
and exploits: 

" Will Porter, shortly after coming to Texas, became 
a member of the Hill City Quartette, of Austin, com- 
posed of C. E. Hillyer, R. H. Edmundson, Howard 
Long, and himself. Porter was the littlest man in the 
crowd, and, of course, basso profundo. He was 
about five feet six inches tall, weighed abgut one 

140 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

hundred and thirty pounds, had coal black hair, gray 
eyes, and a long, carefully twisted moustache; looked 
as though he might be a combination between the 
French and the Spanish, and I think he once told me 
that the blood of the Huguenot flowed in his veins. 
He was one of the most accomplished gentlemen I 
ever knew. His voice was soft and musical, with 
just enough rattle in it to rid it of all touch of ef- 
feminacy. He had a keen sense of hiunour, and there 
were two distinct methods of address which were 
characteristic with him — ^his business address and his 
friendly address. As a business man, his face was 
calm, almost expressionless; his demeanour was 
steady, even calculated. He always worked for a 
high class of employers, was never wanting for a 
position, and was prompt, accurate, talented, and 
very eflicient; but the minute he was out of business 
— ^that was all gone. He always approached a friend 
with a merry twinkle in his eye and an expression 
which said : * Come on, boys, we are going to have a 
lot of fim,' and we usually did. 

"The story of The Green Door* in its spirit and 
in its fact was just such a thing as might happen with 
him any night. It is but justice, in order to give 
balance to this unique character, to say that he made 
no religious professions; he never talked infidelity 
nor scepticism; he had such a reverence for other 
people's views that he never entered into religious 
discussions; and personally he seemed rather indif- 

• See "The Four Million." 

141 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

ferent to the subject, though in no wise opposed to it. 
He rarely ever missed church, and the Hill City 
Quartette were nearly always to be found in either the 
Baptist or the St. David's Episcopal Church choirs, 
though he usually attended church on Sunday evenings 
at the Presbyterian Church and sang in their choir. 

'*He got interested in society and lost all taste for 
the drug business. Being a fine penman, a good ac- 
countant, well educated, and with good address, it 
was an easy matter for him to make a living without 
working every day and Sunday, too, and most of the 
evenings besides. The fact of the matter is, while 
W. S. P. would not have admitted it for the world, I 
think he really wanted a little more time for love- 
making. So during the time of our association, he 
went to work at eight in the morning and quit at 
four. He always had sufficient money for what he 
needed ; if he had any more, no one knew it. He was 
very fond of going fishing, but he let you do the fishing 
after he went. He loved to go hunting, but he let 
you kill the birds, and somehow I always thought 
that on these trips he got something out of the oc- 
casion that he enjoyed all by himself; they were not 
occasions which invited the introduction of senti- 
ment, yet I believe his enjoyment of them was purely 
sentimental. He loved the mountains and the plains ; 
he loved to hear the birds sing and the brooks babble, 
and all those things, but he did not talk to the boys 
about it. 

**He was accomplished in all the arts of a society 

142 



LITTLE PICTURES OF 0. HENRY 

man; had a good bass voice and sang well; was a good 
dancer and skater; played an interesting game of 
cards, and was preeminently an entertainer. There 
were no wall flowers to Porter, and the girl who went 
with him never lacked for attention. 

"The Hill City Quartette formed the centre of the 
Social Circle in which W. S. P. was the central figure 
during the period of this writing. 

"If W. S. P. at this time had any ambitions as a 
writer, he never mentioned it to me. I do not recall 
that he was fond of reading. One day I quoted 
some lines to him from a poem by John Alexander 
Smith. He made inquiry about the author, bor- 
rowed the book, and committed to memory a great 
many passages from it, but I do not recall ever having 
known him to read any other book. I asked him one 
day why he never read fiction. His reply was: 
*That it was all tame compared with the romance in 
his own life,' — which was really true. 

"Mr. Porter was very careful in the use and selec- 
tion of language. He rarely used slang, and his style 
in ordinary conversation was very much purer and 
more perfect than it is in his writings. This can be 
accounted for in the fact that he was an unusually 
polished gentleman, but writing in the first person, 
the character which he selects to represent himself 
appears to be along a much lower and commoner 
line than he himself actually lived; but, on the other 
hand, the stories that he writes and the quaint way 
he has of putting things were largely characteristic 

143 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

of his personal daily life, and the peculiar turn that 
he gives to his stories — in which he leads you to think 
along logical lines until you think you have antici- 
pated his conclusion, then suddenly brings the story 
to a reasonable but wholly unexpected conclusion — 
was even in this early day an element in his common 
conversation. 

"In the great railroad strike at Fort Worth, Texas, 
the Governor called out the State Militia, and the 
company to which we belonged was sent, but as we 
were permitted a choice in the matter. Porter and I 
chose not to go. In a little while a girl he was in love 
with went to Waco on a visit. Porter moped around 
disconsolate for a few days, and suddenly said to me : 
*I believe I'll take a visit at the Government's ex- 
pense.' With him to think was to act. A telegram 
was sent to Fort Worth: 'Capt. Blank, Fort Worth, 
Texas. Squad of volunteers Company Blank, under 
my command, tender you their services if needed. 
Reply.' 'Come next train,' Captain Blank com- 
manded. Upon reaching the depot no orders for 
transportation of squad had been received. Porter 
actually held up the train until he could telegraph 
and get transportation for his little squad, because 
the girl had been notified that he would be in Waco 
on a certain train. She afterward said that when the 
train pulled into Waco he was sitting on the engine 
pilot with a gun across his lap and a distant glance 
at her was all that he got, but he had had his adven- 
ture and was fully repaid. 

144 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

"This adventure is only one of thousands of such 
incidents that commonly occurred in his life. He 
lived in an atmosphere of adventure that was the 
product of his own imagination. He was an invet- 
erate story-teller, seemingly purely from the pleasure 
of it, but he never told a vulgar joke, and as much as 
he loved humour he would not sacrifice decency for its 
sake, and his stories about women were always refined. 

"He told a great many stories in the first person. 
We were often puzzled to know whether they were 
real or imaginary, and when we made inquiry his stock 
reply was : ' Never question the validity of a joke.' 

"One night at the Lampasas Military Encamp- 
ment of Texas Volunteer Guards, the Quartette, with 
others, had leave of absence to attend the big ball 
at the Park Hotel, with orders to report at 12:00 
sharp. Somehow, with girls and gaiety and music 
and balmy Southern breezes and cooing voices, time 
flies, and before any of us had thought to look at a 
watch it was five minutes past twelve and we were in 
trouble. We had all gathered near the doorway 
looking toward Camp when we saw the Corporal of 
the Guard approaching the building to arrest us. Of 
course, what follows could never have happened in a 
camp of tried veterans, but Porter knew the human 
animal as few people do. He got a friend with an 
unlimited leave of absence to meet the Corporal's 
squad at another door and suggest to them that they 
should not carry the guns in among the ladies. So 
the squad stacked their guns on the outside and went 

145 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

into the other door to arrest us. Up to this point 
Porter had worked the thing without taking us into 
his confidence. As soon as the guns were stacked he 
beckoned to us to follow and we did not stop for 
explanation. We knew where Porter led there would 
be adventure, if not success. He took command; 
we unstacked the arms of the corporal's squad; all 
our boys who did not cany guns were marched as 
under arrest. Now none of us knew the countersign, 
and our success in getting by the sentry was a matter 
of pure grit. As we approached the sentry we were 
crossing a narrow plank bridge in single file, at the 
end of which the sentry threw up his gun and Porter 
marched us right straight up to that gun until the 
front man was marking time with the point of the 
gun right against his stomach. Porter just said to 
the sentry, ' Squad under arrest. Stand aside !' The 
whole thing was done with such courage, decision, 
and audacity, that the sentry never noticed that we 
had not given the countersign, but stepped aside 
and let us pass. A few yards into the camp we 
stacked our guns, and sneaked into our tents. When 
the real corporal and squad came back to camp and 
told his story the sentry refused to accept it and had 
the whole squad placed in the guardhouse for the 
night. WTien the boys began to whisper the joke to 
their comrades in their tents, the disturbance became 
so great that the Corporal's Guard came down to 
ascertain the cause of the disturbance, but in looking 
into the tent found only tired soldier boys snoring 

146 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

as though they had been drugged. There was quite 
a time at the court-martial next morning, at which 
the Corporal and his body were given extra duty for 
their inglorious behaviour on the previous night, but 
no one ever knew our connection with the story." 

But the lure of the pen was getting too strong for 
Will Porter to resist. Life as a teller in the First Na- 
tional Bank of Austin was too routine not to be re- 
lieved by some outlet for his love of fun and for his 
creative literary instinct. An opportunity opened 
to buy a printing outfit, and he seized it and used it 
for a year to issue the Rolling Stone, a weekly paper 
that suggested even then his later method as a hum- 
ourist and as a photographic portrayer of odd types 
of humanity. Dr. D. Daniels — "Dixie" he was to 
Will Porter — ^now a dentist in Galveston, Texas, was 
his partner in this enterprise, and his story of that 
year of fun gives also a picture of Will Porter's habit 
of studying human nature at first hand — sl habit 
that later carried him into many quaint byways of 
New York and into many even more quaint and 
revealing byways of the human heart. Here is Dr. 
Daniels's story: 

"It was in the spring of 1894 that I floated into 
Austin," said Daniels, "and I got a place in the State 
printing office. I had been working there for a short 
time when I heard that a man named Porter had 
bought out the old Iconoclast plant — ^known every- 
where as Brann's Iconoclast — and was looking for a 

147 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

printer to go into the game with him. I went around 
to see him, and that was the first time I met O. Henry. 
Porter had been a clerk in the Texas Land Office and a 
teller in the First National Bank in Austin, and when 
W. C. Brann went to Waco decided to buy out his 
plant and run a weekly humorous paper. 

"I talked things over with him, the proposition 
looked good, and we formed a partnership then and 
there. We christened the paper the Rolling Stone 
after a few discussions, and in smaller type across 
the full-page head we printed *Out for the moss.' 
Which is exactly what we were out for. Our idea 
was to run this weekly with a lot of current events 
treated in humorous fashion, and also to run short 
sketches, drawings, and verse. I had been doing a 
lot of chalk-plate work and the specimens I showed 
seemed to make a hit with Porter. Those chalk- 
plates were the way practically all of our cuts were 
printed. 

"Porter was one of the most versatile men I had 
ever met. He was a fine singer, could write remark- 
ably clever stuff under all circumstances, and was a 
good hand at sketching. And he was the best mimic 
I ever saw in my life. He was one of the genuine 
democrats that you hear about more often than you 
meet. Night after night, after we would shut up 
shop, he would call to me to come along and *go 
bumming.' That was his favourite expression for 
the night-time prowling in which we indulged. We 
would wander through streets and alleys, meeting with 

148 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

some of the worst specimens of down-and-outers it 
has ever been my privilege to see at close range. I've 
seen the most ragged specimen of a bum hold up 
Porter, who would always do anything he could for 
the man. His one great failing was his inability 
to say * No ' to a man. 

"He never cared for the so-called * higher classes' 
but watched the people on the streets and in the 
shops and cafes, getting his ideas from them night 
after night. I think that it was in this way he was 
able to picture the average man with such marvel- 
lous fidelity. 

"Well, as I started to say, we moved into the old 
Iconoclast plant, got out a few issues, and moved into 
the Brueggerhoflf Building. The Rolling Stone met 
with unusual success at the start, and we had in our 
files letters from men like Bill Nye and John Ken- 
drick Bangs praising us for the quality of the sheet. 
We were doing nicely, getting the paper out every 
Saturday — ^approximately — ^and blowing the gross re- 
ceipts every night. Then we began to strike snags. 
One of our features was a series of cuts with humor- 
ous underlines of verse. One of the cuts was the rear 
view of a fat German professor leading an orchestra, 
beating the air wildly with his baton. Underneath 
the cut Porter had written the following verse: 

With his baton the professor beats the bars, 
'Tis also said he beats them when he treats. 

But it made that German gentleman see stars 
When the bouncer got the cue to bar the beats. 

149 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"For some reason or other that issue ahenated 
every German in Austin from the Rolling Stone, and 
cost us more than we were able to figure out in sub- 
scriptions and advertisements. 

"Another mistake Porter made was when he let 
himself be dragged into a San Antonio political fight 
— the O'Brien-Callaghan mayoralty campaign. He 
was pulled into this largely through a broken-down 
English writer, whose name, as I remember, was 
Henry Rider Taylor. How Taylor had any influence 
over him I never was able to make out, for he used 
constantly to make fun of him. *Here comes that 
man Taylor,' he'd say. *Got a diamond on him as 
big as a two-bit piece and shinin' like granulated 
sugar.' But he went into the political scrap just the 
same, and it cost him more than it was worth. 

"We got out one feature of the paper that used to 
meet with pretty general approval. It was a page 
gotten up in imitation of a backwoods country paper, 
and we christened it The Plunkville Patriot, That 
idea has been carried out since then in a dozen dif- 
ferent forms, like The Hogwallow Kentuckian^ and 
The Bingville Bugle, to give two of the prominent 
examples. Porter and I used to work on this part 
of the paper nights and Sundays. I would set the 
type for it, as there was a system to all of the typo- 
graphical errors that we made, and I couldn't trust 
any one else to set it up as we wanted it. 

"Porter used to think up some right amusing fea- 
tures for this part of the paper. I remember that 

150 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

about then we had on hand a lot of cuts of Gihnore, 
of Gilmore's Band, which played at the dedication of 
the State capitol at Austin. We would run these 
cuts of Gihnore for any one, from Li Hung Chang to 
Governor Hogg. 

"The Populist Party was coming in for all sorts of 
publicity at this time, and the famous 'Sockless' 
Simpson, of Kansas, was running for Congress. Por- 
ter worked out a series of *Tictocq, the Great French 
Detective,' in burlesque of 'Lecoq,' and in one story, 
I remember, had a deep-laid conspiracy to locate a 
pair of socks in Simpson's luggage, thus discrediting 
him with his political following. 

"The paper ran along for something over a year, 
and then was discontinued. Following the political 
trouble and the other troubles in which Porter became 
involved, he left the State. Some time was spent in 
Houston; the next stop was New Orleans; then he 
jumped to South America, and only returned to Texas 
for a short period before leaving the State forever. 
His experiences on a West Texas ranch, in Texas 
cities and in South America, however, gave him a 
thorough insight into the average run of people whom 
he pictured so vividly in his later work. He was a 
greater man than any of us knew when we were with 
him in the old days." 

Ill — ^The New York Days — Richard Dvffy's narrative 

His coming to New York, with the resolution "to 
write for bread," as he said once in a mood of acrid 

151 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

humour, was dramatic, as is a whisper compared to a 
subdued tumult of voices. I beheve I am correct in 
saying that outside his immediate family few were 
aware that O. Heniy- was entering this *' nine-day 
town" except Oilman Hall, my associate on Ainslees 
Magazine, the publishers, Messrs. Street and Smith, 
and myself. For some time we had been buying 
stories from him, written in his perfect Spencerian 
copperplate hand that was to become famihar to so 
many editors. Only then he wrote always with a pen 
on white paper, whereas once he was established in 
New York he used a lead pencil sharpened to a 
needle's point on one of the yellow pads that were 
always to be seen on his table. The stories he pub- 
lished at this period were laid either in the Southwest 
or in Central America, and those of the latter countries 
form the bulk of his first issued volume, "Cabbages 
and Kings." It was because we were sure of him as a 
writer that our publishers willingly advanced the 
cheque that brought him to New York and assured 
him a short breathing spell to look round and settle. 
Also, it was because O. Henr^^ wanted to come. 
You could always make him do an\i:hing he wanted to 
do, as he had a wav of saving, if vou were coaxmg him 
into an invitation he had no intention of pursuing into 
effect. 

It was getting late on a fine spring afternoon down 
at Duane and William streets when he came to meet 
us. From the outer gate the boy presented a card 
bearing the name William Sydney Porter. I don't 

152 



LITTLE PICTURES OF 0. HENRY 

remember just when we found out that *'0. Henry" 
was merely a pen name; but think it was during the 
correspondence arranging that he come to New York. 
I do remember, however, that when we were prepar- 
ing our yearly prospectus, we had written to him, 
asking that he tell us what the initial O. stood for, as 
we wished to use his photograph and preferred to 
have his name in full. It was the custom and would 
make his name stick faster in the minds of readers. 
With a courteous flourish of appreciation at the 
honour we were offering him In making him known to 
the world, he sent us ''Olivier," and so he appeared as 
Olivier Henry in the first publishers' announcement 
in which his stories were heralded. Later he confided 
to us, smiling, what a lot of fun he had had In picking 
out a first name of sufficient advertising effectiveness 
that began with O. 

As happens in these matters, whatever mind pic- 
ture Gilman Hall or I had formed of him from his 
letters, his handwriting, his stories, vanished before 
the impression of the actual man. He wore a dark 
suit of clothes, I recall, and a four-in-hand tie of 
bright colour. He carried a black derby, high- 
crowned, and walked with a springy, noiseless step. 
To meet him for the first time you felt his most not- 
able quality to be reticence, not a reticence of social 
timidity, but a reticence of dellberateness. If you 
also were observing, you would soon understand that 
his reticence proceeded from the fact that civilly 
yet masterfully he was taking in every item of the 

153 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"you" being presented to him to the accompaniment 
of convention's phrases and ideas, together with the 
'*you" behind this presentation. It was because he 
was able thus to assemble and sift all the multi- 
farious elements of a personality with sleight-of- 
hand swiftness that you find him characterizing a 
person or a neighbourhood in a sentence or two; and 
once I heard him characterize a list of editors he 
knew each in a phrase. 

On his first afternoon in New York we took him 
on our usual walk uptown from Duane Street to 
about Madison Square. That was a long walk for O. 
Henry, as any who knew him may witness. Another 
long one was when he walked about a mile over a 
fairly high hill with me on a zigzag path through 
autumn woods. I showed him plains below us and hills 
stretching away so far and blue they looked like the il- 
limitable sea from the deck of an ocean liner. But it 
was not until we approached the station from which 
we were to take the train back to New York that he 
showed the least sign of animation. "What's the 
matter. Bill," I asked, "I thought you'd like to see 
some real country." His answer was: "Kunn'l, 
how kin you expcck me to appreciate the glories of 
nature when you walk me over a mounting like that 
an' I got new shoes on?" Then he stood on one foot 
and on the other, caressing each aching member for a 
second or two, and smiled with bashful knowingness 
so like him. 

It was one of his whimsical amusements, I must 

154 



LITTLE PICTURES OF 0. HENRY 

say here, to speak in a kind of country style of Eng- 
lish, as though the English language were an instru- 
ment he handled with hesitant unfamiliarity. Thus 
it happened that a woman who had written to him 
about his stories and asked if her ''lady friend" and 
she might meet him, informed him afterward: "You 
mortified me nearly to death, you talked so un- 
grammatical ! " 

We never knew just where he stopped the first 
night in New York, beyond his statement that it 
was at a hotel not far from the ferry in a neighbour- 
hood of so much noise that he had not been able to 
sleep. I suppose we were voluminous with sugges- 
tions as to where he might care to live, because we 
felt we had some knowledge of the subject of board 
and lodging, and because he was the kind of man 
you'd give your best hat to on short acquaintance, if 
he needed a hat — ^but also he was the kind of man who 
would get a hat for himself. Within about twenty- 
four hours he called at the office again to say that he 
had taken a large room In a French table d'hote hotel 
in Twenty-fourth Street, between Broadway and 
Sixth Avenue. Moreover, he brought us a story. 
In those days he was very prolific. He wrote not 
only stories, but occasional skits and light verse. In 
a single number of Ainslee^s, as I remember, we had 
three short stories of his, one of which was signed "O. 
Henry" and the other two with pseudonyms. Cf 
the latter, TMiile the Auto Waits,* was picked out 

• See "Voice of the City". 

155 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

by several newspapers outside New York as an un- 
usually clever short story. But as O. Henry natur- 
ally he appeared most frequently, as frequently as 
monthly publication allows, for to my best recollec- 
tion of the many stories we saw of his there were only 
three about which we said to him, we would rather 
have another instead. 

Still he lived in West Twenty-fourth Street, al- 
though the place had no particular fascination for 
him. We used to see him every other day or so, at 
luncheon, at dinner, or in the evening. Various 
magazine editors began to look up O. Henry, which 
was a job somewhat akin to tracing a lost person. 
While his work was coming under general notice 
rapidly, he made no effort to push himself into general 
acquaintance; and all who knew him when he was 
actually somewhat of a celebrity should be able to 
say that it was about as easy to induce him to **go 
anywhere" to meet somebody as it is to have a child 
take medicine. He was persuaded once to be the 
guest of a member of the Periodical Publishers' As- 
sociation on a sail up the Hudson; but when the boat 
made a stop at Poughkeepsie, O. Henry slipped ashore 
and took the first train back to New York. Yet he 
was not unsociable, but a man that liked a few 
friends round him and who dreaded and avoided a 
so-called "party" as he did a crowd in the subway. 

It was at his Twenty-fourth Street room that 
Robert H. Davis, then of the staff of the New York 
World, ran him to cover, as it were, and concluded 

156 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

a contract with him to furnish one story a week for a 
year at a fixed salary. It was a gigantic task to face, 
and I have heard of no other writer who put the 
same quahty of effort and material in his work able 
to produce one story every seven days for fifty-two 
successive weeks. The contract was renewed, I be- 
lieve, and all during this time O. Henry was selling 
stories to magazines as well. His total of stories 
amount to two hundred and fifty-one, and when it is 
considered that they were written in about eight 
years, one may give him a good mark for industry, 
especially as he made no professional vaunt about 
"loving his work." Once, when dispirited, he said 
that almost any other way of earning a living was 
less of a toil than writing. The mood is common 
to writers, but not so common as to happen to a man 
who practically had editors or agents of editors sitting 
on his doorstep requesting copy. 

When he undertook his contract with the World 
he moved to have more room and more comfortable 
surroundings for the new job. But he did not move 
far, no farther than across Madison Square, in East 
Twenty-fourth Street, to a house near Fourth Avenue. 
Across the street stands the Metropolitan Building, 
although it was not so vast then. He had a bedroom 
and sitting-room at the rear of the parlour floor with 
a window that looked out on a typical New York 
yard, boasting one ailanthus tree frowned upon by 
time-stained extension walls of other houses. More 
and more men began to seek him out, and he was glad 

157 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

to see them, for a good deal of loneliness enters into 
the life of a man that writes fiction during the better 
part of the day, and when his work is over feels he 
must move about somewhere to gather new material. 
Here it was that he received a visit one day from a 
stranger, who announced that he was a business man, 
but had decided to change his line. He meant to 
write stories, and having read several of O. Henry's, 
he was convinced that kind of story would be the 
best paying proposition. O. Henry liked the man 
ofiP-hand, but he could not help being amused at his 
attitude toward a ''literary career." I asked what 
advice he gave the visitor, and he answered: "I 
told him to go ahead!" The sequel no doubt O. 
Henry thoroughly enjoyed, for within a few years 
the stranger had become a best-seller, and continues 
such. 

O. Henry remained only for a few months in these 
lodgings, having among a dozen reasons for moving 
the fact that he had more money. 

I follow his movings with his trunks, his bags, his 
books, a few, but books he read, and his pictures, like- 
wise a few, that were original drawings presented to 
him, or some familiar printed picture that had caught 
his fancy, because in his movings you trace his life in 
New York. His next abiding-place was at 55 Irving 
Place, as he has said in a letter, *'a few doors from 
old Wash. Irving's house." Here he had almost the 
entire parlour floor with a window large as a store 
front, opening only at the sides in long panels. At 

158 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

either one of these panels he would sit for hours 
watching the world go by along the street, not gazing 
idly, but noting men and women with penetrating 
eyes, making guesses at what they did for a living, 
and what fun they got out of it when they had earned 
it. 

He was a man you could sit with a long while and 
feel no necessity for talking; but ever so often a pas- 
serby would evoke a remark from him that converted 
an iota of humanity into the embryo of a story. 
Although he spoke hardly ever to any one in the 
house except the people who managed it, he had the 
lodgers all ticketed in his mind. He was friendly 
but distant with persons of the neighbourhood he 
was bound to meet regularly, because he lived so 
long there, and I have often thought he must have 
persisted as a mysterious man to them simply because 
he was so far from being communicative. 

From Irving Place he went back across the Square 
to live in a house next to the rectory of Trinity Chapel 
in West Twenty-fifth Street. But now he moved 
because the landlady and several lodgers were moving 
to the same house. From here his next change was 
to the Caledonia, in West Twenty-sixth Street, 
whence, as everybody knows, he made his last move 
to the Polyclinic Hospital, where he died. 

Part IV — ^As He Showed Himself in His Letters 

Collections of material about an author are not 
respecters of chronology, and in the material con- 

159 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

cerning O. Henry assembled chiefly by the energ;^^ of 
the late Harry Peyton Steger are many curious con- 
trasts — little printed rejection slips from Sunday 
newspapers of an early date keeping company with 
long and appreciative letters of later date from maga- 
zine editors, and clippings from the London Spectator 
comparing O. Henry with Stevenson. 

There are letters of O. Henry's telling of his first 
experiences with "the editor fellers" and recent book 
reports which show that the public has bought seven 
hundred and fifty thousand copies of his books in 
twelve months, and that two of his stories have 
been put on the stage and many of them dramatized 
for the *' movies." 

But in all the material, reports, biographical 
sketches, and so forth, the most revealing things are 
his own letters. Almost always they are filled with 
quaint conceits, usually with a kind of cartoon hum- 
our and sometimes with puns. They show little 
scholarship but much humanity. They are the kind 
of letters that give the most pleasure to an average 
person. 

In the last years of his life Sydney Porter was never 
well and he constantly referred to his ill health in his 
letters, but always with good humour and good cheer. 

For instance, he wrote in a letter to his publishers: 

My Dear Mr. Lanier : 

In a short time, say two weeks at the outside, I'll turn in 
enough of the book for the purposes you require, as per your 
recent letter. 

160 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

I've been pretty well handicapped for a couple of months and 
am in the hands of a fine tyrant of a doctor, who makes me come 
to see him every other day, and who has forbidden me to leave 
the city until he is through with me, and then only under his 
own auspices and direction. It seems that the goddess Hygiene 
and I have been strangers for years; and now Science must step 
in and repair the damage. My doctor is a miracle worker and 
promises that in a few weeks he will double my capacity, which 
sounds very good both for me and for him, when the payment 
of the bill is considered. 

Later he wrote Mr. Steger from Asheville: 

Dear Colonel Steger: 

I'd have answered your letter, but I've been under the 
weather with a slight relapse. But on the whole I'm improving 
vastly. I've a doctor who says I've absolutely no physical 
trouble except neurasthenia, and that outdoor exercise and air 
will fix me as good as new. As for the diagnosis of the New, 
York doctors — ^they are absolutely without foundation. I am 
twenty pounds lighter and can climb mountains Hke a goat. 

Some time previous to this he wrote in a similar 
vein to a New York editor: 

My Dear Colonel: 

I've been intending to write you a long time, but the fact is, 
I haven't written a line of MS. and scarcely a letter since I've 
been down here. I've been putting in all my time trying to get 
back in good shape again. The simple life has been the thing I 
needed, and by or before Christmas I expect to be at work again 
in better condition than ever. It is lonesome down here as 
Broadway when you are broke, but I shall try to stick it out a 
couple of weeks or so longer. 

Tell Hampton's not to get discouraged about their story. 
It'll come pretty soon, and be all the better for the wait. As I 

161 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

said, I haven't sent out a line since I've been here — haven't 
earned a cent; just Hved on nerve and persimmons. 

Hope you'll get your project through all right, and make a 
million. With the same old fraternal and nocturnal regards, 

I remain. 

Yours as usual, 

S. P. 

His ill health kept him from writmg either much 
or regularly, and consequently he was often tempo- 
rarily out of money in spite of the fact that his stories 
were in great demand. To the same editor to whom 
he wrote of his health at another time he sent this 
typical letter concerning finances. 

The Caledonia. 
My Dear Colonel Griffith: 

If you've got $100 right in your desk drawer you can have my 
next story, which will be ready next Tuesday at the latest. 
That will pay half. The other half on delivery. 

I'm always w^anting money, and I have to have a century this 
morning. 

I just wanted to give you a chance at the story at summer 
raieSy if you want it. 

Please give the bearer a positive answer, as I'll have to know 
at once so as to place it elsewhere this forenoon. 

Yours very truly, 

Sydney Porter. 
P.S. — Story guaranteed satisfactory or another supplied. 

This letter was written when his stories were in 
great demand, when he could sell many more than he 
could write, and sell them at higher prices than this 
letter indicates. Not ten years before that, however, 
he was unknown to the magazine field of literature. 

162 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

About the time that he succeeded in selling his 
first stories to Everybody's he began a correspondence 
with an old friend, A. J. Jennings, ex-train robber, 
lawyer, author, and reformer, which contains the his- 
tory of the now famous story Holding Up a Train.* 
The first letter was as follows: 

Dear Jennings 

I have intended to write you and Billy every week since I left, 
but kept postponing it because I expect to move on to Washing- 
ton (sounds hke Stonewall Jackson talk, doesn't it?) almost any 
time. I am very comfortably situated here, but expect to leave 
in a couple of weeks anyhow. 

I have been doing quite a deal of business with the editors 
since I got down to work, and have made more than I could at 
any other business. 



Special regards to "Tex." Love to Hans and Fritz. 

Sincerely yours, 

W. S. P. 

This letter suggested the idea which was later 
worked out between them, Jennings supplying the 
data and Porter putting on the finishing touches. 
In a second letter [included in the Letters already 
published in ''Rolling Stones"] O. Henry explained how 
the article ought to be written. A part of this letter 
might well be in every beginner's scrapbook, for there 
was never better advice about writing: "Begin 
abruptly without any philosophizing" is part of his 
doctrine. I know of one magazine office where they 

♦ See "Sixes and Sevens.** 

163 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

take out the first paragraph of at least a third of the 
articles that are accepted for the simple reason that 
they do not add anything to the story. These first 
paragraphs bear the same relation to progress in the 
story as cranking an automobile does to progress on 
the road. They are merely to get the engine run- 
ning. 

"Describe the facts and details — information is 
what we want — the main idea is to be natural, direct, 
and concise." It would be hard to get better advice 
than this. 

In the spirit of these later letters and in their style 
there is little to distinguish them from the epistles 
he sent back to North Carolina when he first went 
to Texas, except the diflference in length. This letter 
to Mrs. Hall, the mother of the men on whose ranch 
Porter lived, is a fair sample of these early writings. 

La Salle Co., Texas, 
Dear Mrs. Hall: 

Your welcome letter, which I received a good while ago, was 
much appreciated, and I thought I would answer it in the hopes 
of getting another from you. I am very short of news, so if you 
find anything in this letter rather incredible, get Dr. Beall to 
discount it for you to the proper size. He always questions 
my veracity since I came out here. Why didn't he do it when 
I was at home? Dick has got his new house done, and it looks 
very comfortable and magnificent. It has a tobacco-barn-like 
grandeur about it that always strikes a stranger with, awe, 
and during a strong north wind the safest place about it is out- 
side at the northern end. 

A coloured lady is now slinging hash in the kitchen and has 

164 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

such an air of command and condescension about her that the 
pots and kettles all get out of her way with a rush. I think 
she is a countess or a dukess in disguise. CatuUa has grown 
wonderfully since you left; thirty or forty new houses have gone 
up and thirty or forty barrels of whiskey gone down. The bar- 
keeper is going to Europe on a tour next summer and is thinking 
of buying Mexico for his little boy to play with. They are 
getting along finely with the pasture; there are sixty or seventy 
men at work on the fence and have been having good weather 
for working. Ed. Brockman is there in charge of the commis- 
sary tent, and issues provisions to the contractors. I saw him 
last week, and he seemed very well. 

Lee came up and asked me to go down to the camps and take 
Brockman's place for a week or so while he went to San Antonio. 
Well, I went down some six or seven miles from the ranch. On 
arriving I counted at the commissary tent nine niggers, sixteen 
Mexicans, seven hounds, twenty-one six-shooters, four desper- 
adoes, three shotguns, and a barrel of molasses. Inside there 
were a good many sacks of corn, flour, meal, sugar, beans, coffee, 
and potatoes, a big box of bacon, some boots, shoes, clothes, 
saddles, rifles, tobacco, and some more hounds. The work was to 
issue the stores to the contractors as they sent for them, and was 
Hght and easy to do. Out at the rear of the tent they had 
started a graveyard of men who had either kicked one of the 
hounds or prophesied a norther. When night came, the 
gentleman whose good fortune it was to be dispensing the stores 
gathered up his saddle-blankets, four old corn sacks, an oil coat 
^nd a sheep skin, made all the room he could in the tent by 
shifting and arranging the bacon, meal, etc., gave a sad look 
at the dogs that immediately filled the vacuum, and went and 
slept outdoors. The few days I was there I was treated more as 
a guest than one doomed to labour. Had an offer to gamble 
from the nigger cook, and was allowed as an especial favour to 
drive up the nice, pretty horses and give them some com. And 
the kind of accommodating old tramps and cowboys that con- 

165 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

stitute the outfit would drop in and board, and sleep and smoke, 
and cuss and gamble, and lie and brag, and do everything in 
their power to make the t me pass pleasantly and profitably — 
to themselves. I enjoyed the thing very much, and one even- 
ing when I saw Brockman roll up to the camp, I was very 
sorry, and went off very early next morning in order to escape 
the heartbreaking sorrow of parting and leave-taking with the 
layout. 

Now, if you think this fine letter worth a reply, write me a 
long letter and tell me what I would like to know, and I will 
rise up and call you a friend in need, and send you a fine cameria 
obscuria view of this ranch and itemized account of its operations 
and manifold charms. Tell Dr. Beall not to send me any cake, 
it would make some postmaster on the road ill if he should eat 
too much, and I am a friend to all humanity. I am writing by a 
very poor light, which must excuse bad spelling and uninterest- 
ing remarks. 

I remain, 

Very respectfully yours, 

W. S. Porter. 
Everybody well. 

More interesting, however, than these early Texas 
letters in showing the spirit of the man are the letters 
that he wrote from time to time to his daughter, 
Margaret, especially those written when she was a 
little girl. In them he speaks quite often of Uncle 
Remus, which they evidently read together, and they 
are all filled with the quaint conceits that enliven the 
two following: 

My Dear Margaret : 

I ought to have answered your last letter sooner, but I haven't 
had a chance. It*s getting mighty cool now. It won't be long 

166 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

before persimmons are ripe in Tennessee. I don't think you 
ever ate any persimmons, did you? I think persimmons pudden 
(not pudding) is better than cantalope or watermelon either. 
If you stay until they get ripe you must get somebody to make 
you one. 

If it snows while you are there, you must try some fried snow- 
balls, too. They are mighty good with Jack Frost gravy. 

You must see how big and fat you can get before you go back 
to Austin. 

When I come home I want to find you big and strong enough 
to pull me all about town on a sled when we have a snow storm. 
Won't that be nice? I just thought I'd write this little letter 
in a hurry so the postman would get it, and when I'm in a hurry 
I never can think of anything to write about. You and Mummy 
must have a good time, and keep a good lookout and don't let 
tramps or yellowjackets catch you. I'll try to write something 
better next time. Write soon. 

Your loving 

Papa. 

February 14, 1900. 
Dear Margaret: 

It has been quite a long time since I heard from you. I got a 
letter from you in the last century, and a letter once every 
hundred years is not very often. I have been waiting from day 
to day, putting off writing to you, as I have been expecting to 
have something to send you, but it hasn't come yet, and I 
thought I would write anyhow. 

I hope your watch runs all right. When you write again be 
sure and look at it and tell me what time it is, so I won't have to 
get up and look at the clock. 

With much love. 

Papa. 

As the last of these little sidelights on his character 
and humour which these letters convey it is fitting to 

167 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

give two showing a peculiarly strong trait — his mod- 
esty. He did not seek publicity for himself and he 
had a lower opinion of his work as work that would 
last than almost any one else. He wrote in all sin- 
cerity to his publishers after the Christmas of 1908: 

January 1, 1909. 
My Dear Mr. Lanier: 

I want to say how very much I admire and appreciate the 
splendid edition of my poor stories that you all put in my 
stocking for Christmas. Unworthy though they were for such 
a dress, they take on from it such an added importance that I 
am sure they will stimulate me to do something worthy of such 
a binding. 

I would say by all means don't let the Lipton Pub. Co. escape. 
Wine 'em or chase 'em in an auto and sell 'em all the "Pan- 
cakes" they can eat. Any Httle drippings of Maple Syrup will 
come in handy after the havoc of Christmas. 

I'll leave things of this sort freely to your judgment. 

A Happy New Year to yourself and the House 

Very truly yours, 

Sydney Porter. 

To an admirer who asked for his picture for publi- 
cation he jocularly refused a request which to most 
authors is merely a business opportunity. It is a 
characteristic letter. It was not until very shortly 
before his death that through much persuasion Syd- 
ney Porter finally allowed himself, his picture, and 
O. Henry to be identified together. 

My Dear Mr. Hannigan: 

Your letter through McClures' received. Your brief sub- 
mitted (in re photo) is so flattering that I almost regret being a 

168 



LITTLE PICTURES OF O. HENRY 

modest man. I have had none taken for several years except 
one, which was secured against my wishes and printed by a 
magazine. I haven't even one in my own possession. I don't 
beheve in inflicting one's picture on the pubUc imless one has 
done something to justify it — and I never take Peruna. 

Sorry! you'd get one if I had it. 

That lunch proposition sounds all right — may be in Boston 
some time and need it. 

With regards. 

Yours truly, 

O. Henry. 



169 



THE KNIGHT IN DISGUISE* 

CONCERNING O. HENRY (SYDNEY PORTER) 
By Nicholas Vachel Lindsay 



I 



S THIS Sir Philip Sidney, this loud clown. 
The darling of the glad and gaping town? 



This is that dubious hero of the press 

Whose slangy tongue and insolent address 

Were spiced to rouse on Sunday afternoon 

The man with yellow journals round him strewn. 

We laughed and dozed, then roused and read again 

And vowed O. Henry funniest of men. 

He always worked a triple-hinged surprise 

To end the scene and make one rub his eyes. 

He comes with vaudeville, with stare and leer. 
He comes with megaphone and specious cheer. 
His troup, too fat or short or long or lean, 
Step from the pages of the magazine 
With slapstick or sombrero or with cane: 
The rube, the cowboy, or the masher vain. 
They overact each part. But at the height 



• This poem is reprinted with one or two slight changes which we make at the anthor'a r^ 
quest, from "General William Booth Enters into Heaven, and Other Poems," by Nicholas Vachel 
Lindsay, published in 1916 by the Macmillan Company. 

170 



THE KNIGHT IN DISGUISE^ 

Of banter and of canter, and delight 

The masks fall off for one queer mstant there 

And show real faces; faces full of care 

And desperate longing; love that's hot or cold; 

And subtle thoughts, and countenances bold. 

The masks go back. 'Tis one more joke. 

Laugh on! 
The goodly grown-up company is gone. 

No doubt, had he occasion to address 

The brilliant court of purple-clad Queen Bess, 

He would have wrought for them the best he knew 

And led more loftily his actor-crew. 

How coolly he misquoted. 'Twas his art — 

Slave-scholar, who misquoted — ^from the heart. 

So when we slapped his back with friendly roar 

Esop awaited him without the door, — 

Esop the Greek, who made dull masters laugh 

With little tales oifox and dog and calf. 

And be it said, amid his pranks so odd 
With something nigh to chivalry he trod — 
The fragile drear and driven would defend — 
The little shop-girls' knight unto the end. 
Yea, he had passed, ere we could understand 
The blade of Sidney glimmered in his hand. 
Yea, ere we knew. Sir Philip's sword was drawn 
With valiant cut and thrust, and he was gone. 



171 



THE a:mazing genius of o. henry* 

By Stephen Leacock 

TO BRITISH readers of this book the above 
heading may look Hke the title of a comic 
stor^^ of Irish life with the apostrophe gone 
wrong. It is, alas ! only too likely that many, perhaps 
the majority, of British readers have never heard of 
O. Heniy\ It is quite possible also that they are not 
ashamed of themselves on that account. Such 
readers would, in truly British fashion, merely classify 
O. Henry as one of the people that ''one has never 
heard of." If there was any disparagement implied, 
it would be, as O. Henry himself would have re- 
marked, "on him." And yet there have been sold in 
the United States, so it is claimed, one million copies 
of his books. 

The point is one which illustrates some of the 
diflSculties which beset the circulation of literature, 
though written in a common tongue, to and fro across 
the Atlantic. The British and the American public 
has each its own preconceived ideas about what it 
proposes to like. The British reader turns with dis- 
taste from anything which bears to him the taint of 
literary vulgarity or cheapness; he instinctively loves 



•From "Easays and Litcrarj Studies,** 1916, John Lane Co, 

172 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

anything which seems to have the stamp of scholar- 
ship and revels in a classical allusion even when he 
doesn't understand it. 

This state of mind has its qualities and its defects. 
Undoubtedly it makes for the preservation of a 
standard and a proper appreciation of the literature 
of the past. It helps to keep the fool in his place, 
imitating, like a watchful monkey, the admirations 
of better men. But on its defective side it sins against 
the light of intellectual honesty. 

The attitude of the American reading public is 
turned the other way. I am not speaking here of the 
small minority which reads Walter Pater in a soft 
leather cover, listens to lectures on Bergsonian il- 
lusionism and prefers a drama league to a bridge 
club. I refer to the great mass of the American 
people, such as live in frame dwellings in the country, 
or exist in city boarding-houses, ride in the subway, 
attend a ten-twenty-thirty vaudeville show in prefer- 
ence to an Ibsen drama, and read a one-cent news- 
paper because it Is intellectually easier than a two. 
This is the real public. It is not, of course, ignorant 
in the balder sense. A large part of it is, technically, 
highly educated and absorbs the great mass of the 
fifty thousand college degrees granted in America 
each year. But it has an instinctive horror of 
"learning," such as a cat feels toward running water. 
It has invented for itself the ominous word "high- 
brow" as a sign of warning placed over things to be 
avoided. This word to the American mind conveys 

173 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

much the same *' taboo" as haunts the tomb of a 
Polynesian warrior, or the sacred horror that en- 
veloped in ancient days the dark pine grove of a 
sylvan deity. 

For the ordinary American this word "highbrow" 
has been pieced together out of recollections of a 
college professor in a black tail coat and straw hat 
destroying the peace of an Adirondack boarding- 
house: out of the unforgotten dullness of a Chautau- 
qua lecture course, or the expiring agonies of a 
Browning Society. To such a mind the word "high- 
brow" sweeps a wide and comprehensive area with 
the red flag of warning. It covers, for example, the 
whole of history, or, at least, the part of it antecedent 
to the two last presidential elections. All foreign 
literature, and all references to it are "highbrow." 
Shakespeare, except as revived at twenty-five cents 
a seat with proper alterations in the text, is "high- 
brow." The works of Milton, the theory of evolu- 
tion, and, in fact, all science other than Christian 
science, is "highbrow." A man may only read and 
discuss such things at his peril. If he does so, he 
falls forthwith into the class of the Chautauqua 
lecturer and the vacation professor; he loses all claim 
to mingle in the main stream of life by taking a hand 
at ten-cent poker, or giving his views on the outcome 
of the 1916 elections. 

All this, however, by way of preliminary discussion 
suggested by the strange obscurity of O. Henry in 
Great Britain, and the wide and increasing popular- 

174 



THE A:MAZING genius of 0. HENRY 

ity of his books in America. O. Henry is, more than 
any author who ever wrote in the United States, an 
American writer. As such his work may well appear 
to a British reader strange and unusual, and, at a 
casual glance, not attractive. It looks at first sight 
as if written in American slang, as if it were the care- 
less unrevised production of a journalist. But this is 
only the impression of an open page, or at best, a judg- 
ment formed by a reader who has had the ill-fortune 
to light upon the less valuable part of 0. Henry's 
output. Let it be remembered that he wrote over 
two hundred stories. Even in Kentucky, where it is 
claimed that all whiskey is good whiskey, it is ad- 
mitted that some whiskey Is not so good as the rest. 
So it may be allowed to the most infatuated admirer 
of O. Henry, to admit that some of his stories are not 
as good as the others. Yet even that admission 
would be reluctant. 

But let us recommence in more orthodox fashion. 

O. Henry — as he signed himseK — was bom in 1867, 
most probably at Greensboro, North Carolina. For 
the first thirty or thirty-five years of his life, few 
knew or cared where he was bom, or whither he was 
going. Now that he has been dead five years he 
shares already with Homer the honour of a disputed 
birthplace. 

His real name was William Sydney Porter. His 
nom de plume, O. Henry — hopelessly tame and colour- 
less from a literary point of view — seems to have been 
adopted in a whimsical moment, with no great 

175 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

thought as to its aptness. It is amazing that he 
should have selected so poor a pen name. Those who 
can remember their first shock of pleased surprise on 
hearing that Rudyard Kipling's name was really 
Rudyard Kipling, will feel something like pain in 
learning that any writer could deliberately christen 
himself "O. Henry." 

The circumstance is all the more peculiar inasmuch 
as O. Henry's works abound in ingenious nomencla- 
ture. The names that he claps on his Central Ameri- 
can adventurers are things of joy to the artistic eye — 
General Perrico Ximenes Villablanca Falcon ! Ramon 
Angel de las Cruzes y Miraflores, president of the 
republic of Anchuria! Don Senor el Coronel Encar- 
nacion Rios ! The very spirit of romance and revolu- 
tion breathes through them ! Or what more beautiful 
for a Nevada town than Topaz City.^ What name 
more appropriate for a commuter's suburb than 
Floralhurst.^ And these are only examples among 
thousands. In all the two hundred stories that O. 
Henry wrote, there is hardly a single name that is 
inappropriate or w^tho^it a proper literary suggestive- 
ness, except the name that he signed to them. 

While still a boy, O. Henry (there is no use in call- 
ing him anything else) went to Texas, where he 
worked for three years on a ranch. He drifted into 
the city of Houston and got employment on a news- 
paper. A year later he bought a newspaper of his 
own in Austin, Texas, for the sum of two hundred and 

176 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

fifty dollars. He rechristened it The Rolling Stone, 
wrote it, and even illustrated it, himself. But the 
paper was too well named. Its editor himseK rolled 
away from it, and from the shores of Texas the wan- 
dering restlessness that was characteristic of him 
wafted him down the great GuK to the enchanted 
land of Central America. Here he *' knocked around," 
as he himself has put it, "mostly among refugees 
and consuls." Here, too, was laid the foundation of 
much of his most characteristic work — ^his "Cab- 
bages and Kings," and such stories as Phoebe and 
The Fourth in Salvador. 

Latin America fascinated O. Henry. The languor 
of the tropics; the sunlit seas with their open bays 
and broad sanded beaches, with green palms nodding 
on the slopes above — white-painted steamers lazily 
at anchor^ — quaint Spanish towns, with adobe houses 
and wide squares, sunk in their noon-day sleep — 
beautiful Seiioritas drowsing away the afternoon in 
hammocks; the tinkling of the mule bells on the 
mountain track above the town — ^the cries of un- 
known birds issuing from the dense green of the un- 
broken jungle — and at night, in the soft darkness, 
the low murmur of the guitar, soft thrumming with 
the voice of love — these are the sights and sounds of 
O. Henry's Central America. Here live and move his 
tattered revolutionists, his gaudy generals of the 
mimic army of the existing republic; hither ply his 
white-painted steamers of the fruit trade; here the 

177 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

American consul, with a shadowed past and $600 a 
year, drinks away the remembrance of his northern 
energy and his college education in the land of forget- 
fulness. Hither the absconding banker from the 
States is dropped from the passing steamer, clutching 
tight in his shaking hand his valise of stolen dollars; 
him the disguised detective, lounging beside the little 
drinking shop, watches with a furtive eye. And here 
in this land of enchantment the broken lives, the 
wasted hopes, the ambition that was never reached, 
the frailty that was never conquered, are somehow 
pieced together and illuminated into what they might 
have been — and even the reckless crime and the open 
sin, viewed in the softened haze of such an atmosphere, 
are half forgiven. 

Whether this is the "real Central America" or not, 
is of no consequence. It probably is not. The "real 
Central America" may best be left to the up-to-date 
specialist, the energetic newspaper expert, or the 
travelling lady correspondent — to all such persons, in 
fact, as are capable of writing "Six Weeks in Nica- 
ragua," or ''Costa Rica as I Saw It." Most likely the 
Central America of 0. Henry is as gloriously unreal as 
the London of Charles Dickens, or the Salem of 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, or any other beautiful picture 
of the higher truth of life that can be shattered into 
splinters in the distorting of cold fact. 

Form Central America O. Henry rolled, drifted or 
floated — there was no method in his life — back to 
Texas again. Here he worked for two weeks in a 

178 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

drugstore. This brief experience supplied him all 
the rest of his life with local colour and technical 
material for his stories.* So well has he used It that 
the obstinate legend still runs that O. Henry was a 
druggist. A strict examination of his work would 
show that he knew the names of about seventeen 
drugs and was able to describe the rolling of pills 
with the life-like accuracy of one who has rolled them. 
But It was characteristic of his Instinct for literary 
values that even on this slender basis O. Henry was 
able to make his characters "take down from shelves" 
such mysterious things as Sod, et Pot. Tart, or discuss 
whether magnesia carbonate or pulverized glycerine 
Is the best exclplent, and In moments of high tragedy 
poison themselves with "tincture of aconite." 

Whether these terms are correctly used or not I do 
not know. Nor can I conceive that It matters. 0. 
Henry was a literary artist first, last, and always. It 
was the effect and the feeling that he wanted. For 
technical accuracy he cared not one whit. There Is a 
certain kind of author who thinks to make literature 
by Introducing, let us say, a plumber using seven 
different kinds of tap-washers with seven different 
names; and there Is a certain type of reader who Is 
thereby conscious of seven different kinds of Ignor- 
ance and is fascinated forthwith. From pedantry of 
this sort O. Henry Is entirely free. Even literal ac- 
curacy Is nothing to him so long as he gets his effect. 



* As a matter of fact, lie did serve as a drug clerk for a considerable period of time, when a very 
young man, in his uncle's drugstore in Greensboro. — Ed. 

179 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Thus he commences one of his stories with the brazen 
statement: "In Texas you may journey for a thou- 
sand miles in a straight Hne." You can't, of course; 
and O. Henry knew it. It is only his way of saying 
that Texas is a very big place. So with his tincture 
of aconite. It may be poisonous or it may not be. 
But it sounds poisonous and that is enough for O. 
Henry. This is true art. 

After his brief drugstore experience O. Henry 
moved to New Orleans. Even in his Texan and 
Central American days he seems to have scribbled 
stories. In New Orleans he set to work deliberately 
as a writer. Much of his best work was poured 
forth with prodigality of genius into the columns of 
the daily press without thought or fame. The 
money that he received, so it is said, was but a pit- 
tance. Stories that would sell to-day — were O. 
Henry alive and writing them now — for a thousand 
dollars, went for next to nothing. Throughout his 
life money meant little or nothing to him. If he had 
it, he spent it, loaned it, or gave it away. WTien he 
had it not he bargained with an editor for the pay- 
ment in advance of a story^ which he meant to write, 
and of which he exliibited the title or a few sentences 
as a sample, and which he wTote, faithfully enough, 
"when he got round to it." The story runs of how 
one night a beggar on the street asked O. Henry 
for money. He drew forth a coin from his pocket in 
the darkness and handed it to the man. A few mo- 

180 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

ments later the beggar looked at the coin under a 
street lamp, and, being even such a beggar as O. 
Henry loved to write about, he came running back 
with the words, ''Say, you made a mistake, this is a 
twenty-dollar gold piece." "I know it is," said O. 
Henry, ''but it's all I have." 

The story may not be true. But at least it ought 
to be. 

From New Orleans 0. Henry moved to New York 
and became, for the rest of his life, a unit among the 
*'four million" dwellers in flats and apartment houses 
and sand-stone palaces who live within the roar of the 
elevated railway, and from whom the pale light of 
the moon and the small eflFects of the planetary sys- 
tem are overwhelmed in the glare of the Great White 
Way. Here O. Henry's finest work was done — 
inimitable, imsurpassable stories that make up the 
volumes entitled "The Four Million," "The 
Trimmed Lamp," and "The Voice of the City." 

Marvellous indeed they are. Written offhand with 
the bold carelessness of the pen that only genius dare 
use, but revealing behind them such a glow of the 
Imagination and such a depth of understanding of 
the human heart as only genius can make manifest. 

What O. Henry did for Central America he does 
again for New York. It is transformed by the 
magic of his imagination. He waves a wand over it 
and it becomes a city of mystery and romance. It 
is no longer the roaring, surging metropolis that we 
thought we knew, with its clattering elevated, its 

181 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

unending crowds, and on every side the repellent 
selfishness of the rich, the grim struggle of the poor, 
and the listless despair of the outcast. It has be- 
come, as O. Henry loves to call it, Bagdad upon the 
Subway. The glare has gone. There is a soft light 
suffusing the city. Its corner drugstores turn to 
enchanted bazaars. From the open doors of its 
restaurants and palm rooms there issues such a mel- 
ody of softened music that we feel we have but to 
cross the threshold and there is Bagdad waiting for 
us beyond. A transformed waiter hands us to a 
chair at a little table — Arabian, I will swear it — 
beside an enchanted rubber tree. There is red wine 
such as Omar Klayyam drank, here on Sixth Avenue. 
At the tables about us are a strange and interesting 
crew — dervishes in the disguise of American business 
men, caliphs masquerading as tourists, bedouins from 
Syria, and fierce f antassins from the desert turned into 
western visitors from Texas, and among them — can 
we believe our eyes — houris from the inner harems of 
Ispahan and Candahar, whom we mistook but yester- 
day for the ladies of a Shubert chorus! As we pass 
out we pay our money to an enchanted cashier with 
golden hair — sitting behind glass — under the spell of 
some magician without a doubt, and then taking O. 
Henry's hand we wander forth among the ever- 
changing scenes of night adventure, the mingled 
tragedy and humour of The Four Million that his pen 
alone can depict. Nor did ever Haroun-al-Rashid 
and his viziers, wandering at will in the narrow streets 

182 



THE AlVIAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

of their Arabian city, meet such varied adventure as 
Hes before us, stroUing hand in hand with O. Henry 
in the new Bagdad that he reveals. 

But let us turn to the stories themselves. O. 
Henry wrote in all two hundred short stories of an 
average of about fifteen pages each. This was the 
form in which his literary activity shaped itself by 
instinct. A novel he never wrote, a play he often 
meditated but never achieved. One of his books — 
"Cabbages and Kings" — can make a certain claim to 
be continuous. But even this is rather a collection of 
little stories than a single piece of fiction. But it is 
an error of the grossest kind to say that O. Henry's 
work is not sustained. In reality his canvas is vast. 
His New York stories, like those of Central America 
or of the West, form one great picture as gloriously 
comprehensive in its scope as the lengthiest novels of a 
Dickens or the canvas of a Da Vinci. It is only the 
method that is diflFerent, not the result. 

It is hard indeed to illustrate O. Henry's genius by 
the quotation of single phrases and sentences. The 
humour that is in his work lies too deep for that. 
His is not the comic wit that explodes the reader into 
a huge guflfaw of laughter and vanishes. His humour 
is of that deep quality that smiles at life itself and 
mingles our amusement with our tears. 

Still harder is it to try to show the amazing genius 
of O. Henry as a "plot maker," as a designer of inci- 
dent. No one better than he can hold the reader in 

183 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

suspense. Nay, more than that, the reader scarcely 
knows that he is ** suspended," until at the very close 
of the story O. Henry, so to speak, turns on the lights 
and the whole tale is revealed as an entirety. But 
to do justice to a plot in a few paragraphs is almost 
impossible. Let the reader consider to what a few 
poor shreds even the best of our novels or plays is 
reduced, when we try to set forth the basis of it in 
the condensed phrase of a text-book of literature, or 
diminish it to the language of the ''scenario" of a 
moving picture. Let us take an example. 

We will transcribe our immortal ** Hamlet " as faith- 
fully as we can into a few words with an eye to explain 
the plot and nothing else. It will run about as fol- 
lows: 

"Hamlet's uncle kills his father and marries his 
mother, and Hamlet is so disturbed about this that 
he either is mad or pretends to be mad. In this con- 
dition he drives his sweetheart insane and she drowns, 
or practically drowns, herself. Hamlet then kills his 
uncle's chief adviser behind an arras either In mistake 
for a rat, or not. Hamlet then gives poison to his 
uncle and his mother, stabs Laertes and kills him- 
self. There Is much discussion among the critics 
as to whether his actions justify us in calling him In- 
sane." 

There! The example is, perhaps, not altogether 
convincing. It does not seem somehow, faithful 
though It Is, to do Shakespeare justice. But let it 
at least illustrate the point under discussion. The 

184 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

mere bones of a plot are nothing. We could scarcely 
form a judgment on female beauty by studying the 
skeletons of a museum of anatomy. 

But with this distinct understanding, let me try to 
present the outline of a typical O. Henry story. I se- 
lect it from the volume entitled "The Gentle Grafter," 
a book that is mainly concerned with the wiles of 
Jeff Peters and his partners and associates. Mr. 
Peters, who acts as the narrator of most of the stories, 
typifies the perennial fakir and itinerant grafter of 
the Western States — ready to turn his hand to any- 
thing from selling patent medicines under a naphtha 
lamp on the street corner of a Western town to peddl- 
ing bargain Bibles from farm to farm — anything, in 
short, that does not involve work and carries with it 
the pecuHar excitement of trying to keep out of the 
State penitentiary. All the world loves a grafter — at 
least a genial and ingenious grafter — a Robin Hood 
who plimders an abbot to feed a beggar, an Alfred 
Jingle, a Scapin, a Raffles, or any of the multifarious 
characters of the world's literature who reveal the fact 
that much that is best in humanity may flourish even 
on the shadowy side of technical iniquity. Of this 
glorious company is Mr. Jefferson Peters. But let us 
take him as he is revealed in " Jeff Peters as a Per- 
sonal Magnet" and let us allow him to introduce him- 
self and his business. 

"I struck Fisher Hill," Mr. Peters relates, "in a 
buckskin suit, moccasins, long hair, and a thirty-carat 
diamond ring that I got from an actor in Texarkana. 

185 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

I don't know what he ever did with the pocket- 
knife I swapped him for it. 

"I was Dr. T\'augh-hoo, the celebrated Indian 
medicine man. I carried only one best bet just then, 
and that was Resurrection Bitters. It was made of 
life-giving plants and herbs accidentally discovered by 
Ta-qua-la, the beautiful wife of the chief of the Choc- 
taw Nation, while gathering truck to garnish a platter 
of boiled dog for an annual corn dance. . . ." 
In the capacity of Dr. Waugh-hoo, Mr. Peters 
"struck Fisher Hill." He went to a druggist and got 
credit for half a gross of eight-ounce bottles and corks, 
and with the help of the running water from the tap 
in the hotel room, he spent a long evening manu- 
facturing Resurrection Bitter . The next evening 
the sales began. The bitters at fifty cents a bottle 
" started off like sweetbreads on toast at a vegetarian 
dinner." Then there intervenes a constable with a 
German silver badge. "Have you got a city li- 
cense?" he asks, and Mr. Peters's medicinal activity 
comes to a full stop. The threat of prosecution un- 
der the law for practising medicine without a license 
puts Mr. Peters for the moment out of business. 

He returns sadly to his hotel, pondering on his next 
move. Here by good fortune he meets a former 
acquaintance, a certain Andy Tucker, who has just 
finished a tour in the Southern States, working the 
Great Cupid Combination Package on the chivalrous 
and unsuspecting South. 

"Andy," says JeflF, in speaking of his friend's 

186 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

credentials, "was a good street man: and he was more 
than that — he respected his profession and was sat- 
isfied with 300 per cent, profit. He had plenty of 
offers to go into the illegitimate drug and garden seed 
business, but he was never to be tempted off the 
straight path." 

Andy and Jeff take counsel together in long debate 
on the ^orch of the hotel. 

And here, apparently, a piece of good luck came 
to Jeff's help. The very next morning a messenger 
brings word that the Mayor of the town is suddenly 
taken ill. The only doctor of the place is twenty 
miles away. Jeff Peters is summoned to the Mayor's 
bedside. . . . "This Mayor Banks," Jeff re- 
lates, "was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. 
He was making internal noises that would have had 
everybody in San Francisco hiking for the parks. 
A young man was standing by the bedside holding a 
cup of water. . . ." Mr. Peters, called to the 
patient's side, is very cautious. He draws attention 
to the fact that he is not a qualified practitioner, is 
not "a regular disciple of S. Q. Lapius." 

The Mayor groans in pain. The young man at the 
bedside, introduced as Mr. Biddle, the Mayor's 
nephew, urges Mr. Peters — or Doctor Waugh-hoo — 
in the name of common humanity to attempt a cure. 

Finally Jeff Peters promises to treat the Mayor by 
"scientific demonstration." He proposes, he says, 
to make use of the "great doctrine of psychic finan- 
ciering — of the enlightening school of long-distance 

187 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

subconscious treatment of fallacies and meningitis — 
of that wonderful indoor sport known as personal 
magnetism." But he warns the Mayor that the 
treatment is difficult. It uses up great quantities of 
soul strength. It comes high. It cannot be at- 
tempted under two hundred and fifty dollars. 

The Mayor groans. But he yields. The treat- 
ment begins. 

*' You ain't sick," says Dr. Waugh-hoo, looking the 
patient right in the eye. "You ain't got any pain. 
The right lobe of your perihelion is subsided." 

The result is surprising. The Mayor's system 
seems to respond at once. '*I do feel some better. 
Doc," he says, "darned if I don't." 

Mr. Peters assumes a triumphant air. He promises 
to return next day for a second and final treatment. 

"I'll come back," he says to the young man, "at 
eleven. You may give him eight drops of turpentine 
and three pounds of steak. Good-morning." 

Next day the final treatment is given. The Mayor 
is completely restored. Two hundred and fifty dol- 
lars, all in cash, is handed to "Dr. Waugh-hoo." The 
young man asks for a receipt. It is no sooner written 
out by Jeff Peters, than: 

"'Now do your duty, officer,' says the Mayor, 
grinning much unlike a sick man. 

"Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm. 

"'You're under arrest. Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias 
Peters,' says he, 'for practising medicine without 
authority under the State law.' 

188 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

"*Who are you?' I asks. 

"'I'll tell you who he is,' says Mr. Mayor, sitting 
up in bed. 'He's a detective employed by the State 
Medical Society. He's been following you over five 
counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed 
up this scheme to catch you. I guess you won't do 
any more doctoring around these parts, Mr. Fakir. 
T\Tiat was it you said I had, Doc.^' the Mayor laughs, 
'compound — well, it wasn't softening of the brain, I 
guess, anyway.'" 

Ingenious, isn't it? One hadn't suspected it. But 
let the reader kindly note the conclusion of the story 
as it follows, handled with the lightning rapidity of a 
conjuring trick. 



C€< 



Come on, ofllcer,' says I, dignified. 'I may as 
well make the best of it.' And then I turns to old 
Banks and rattles my chains. 

"'Mr. Mayor,' says I, 'the time will come soon 
when you'll believe that personal magnetism is a suc- 
cess. And you'll be sure that it succeeded in this 
case, too.' 

"And I guess it did. 

"When we got nearly to the gate, I says: 'We 
might meet somebody now, Andy. I reckon you 

better take 'em off, and ' Hey? Why, of course 

it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and 
that's how we got the capital to go Into business to- 
gether." 

189 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Now let us set beside this a stor^^ of a different 
type, The Furnished Room, which appears in the 
volume called "The Four Million." It shows O. Henry 
at his best as a master of that supreme pathos that 
springs, with but little adventitious aid of time or 
circumstance, from the fundamental things of life 
itself. In the sheer art of narration there is nothing 
done by Maupassant that surpasses The Furnished 
Room. The story runs — so far as one dare attempt 
to reproduce it without quoting it all word for word 
— after this fashion. 

The scene is laid in New York in the lost district 
of the lower West Side, where the wandering feet of 
actors and one-week transients seek furnished rooms 
in dilapidated houses of fallen grandeur. 

One evening after dark a young man prowled 
among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their 
bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage 
upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband 
and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away 
in some remote hollow depths. . . . "I have the 
third floor back vacant since a week back," says the 
landlady. . . . "It's a nice room. It ain't 
often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it 
last summer — no trouble at all and paid in advance 
to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. 
Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They 
done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls, you 
may have heard of her — Oh, that was just the stage 
name — right there over the dresser is where the mar- 

190 



THE AlVIAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

riage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here and 
you see there's plenty of closet room. It's a room 
every one likes. It never stays idle long " 

The young man takes the room, paying a week in 
advance. Then he asks: 

''A young girl — Miss Vashner — ]Miss Eloise Vash- 
ner — do you remember such a one among your 
lodgers? She would be singing on the stage most 
likely," 

The landlady shakes her head. They comes and 
goes, she tells him, she doesn't call that one to 
mind. 

It is the same answer that he has been receiving, 
up and down, in the crumbling houses of the lost 
district, through weeks and months of wandering. 
No, always no. Five months of ceaseless interroga- 
tion and the inevitable negative. So much time 
spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools, 
and choruses; by night among the audiences of 
theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so 
low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. 
. . . The young man, left in his sordid room of the 
third floor back, among its decayed furniture, its 
ragged brocade upholstery, sinks into a chair. The 
dead weight of despair is on him. . . . Then, 
suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with 
the strong, sweet odour of mignonette — the flower 
that she had always loved, the perfume that she had 
always worn. It is as if her very presence was beside 
him in the empty room. He rises. He cries aloud, 

191 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"What, dear?'' as if she had called to him. She has 
been there in the room. He knows it. He feels it. 
Then eager, tremulous with hope, he searches the 
room, tears open the crazy chest of drawers, fumbles 
upon the shelves, for some sign of her. Nothing and 
still nothing — a crumpled playbill, a half-smoked 
cigar, the dreary and ignoble small records of many a 
peripatetic tenant, but of the woman that he seeks, 
nothing. Yet still that haunting perfume that seems 
to speak her presence at his very side. 

The young man dashes trembling from the room. 
Again he questions the landlady — was there not, 
before him in the room, a young lady.^ Surely there 
must have been — fair, of medium height, and with 
reddish gold hair? Surely there was? 

But the landlady, as if obdurate, shakes her head. 
*'I can tell you again," she says, "'twas Sprowls and 
Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls, it was, in 
the theatres, but Missis Moonev she was. The mar- 
riage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over " 

. . . The voun^ man returns to his room. It is 
all over. His search in vain. The ebbing of his last 
hope has drained his faith. . . . For a time he 
sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Then he 
rose. He walked to the bed and began to tear the 
sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he 
drove them tightly into every crevice around windows 
and door. ^Mien all was snug and taut he turned out 
the light, turned the gas full on again, and laid himself 
gratefully upon the bed. 

192 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

And now let the reader note the ending paragraphs 
of the story, so told that not one word of it must be 
altered or abridged from the form in which O. Henry 
framed it. 

It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for 
beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy 
(the landlady) in one of those subterranean retreats 
where housekeepers foregather and the worm dieth 
seldom. 

"I rented out my third floor, back, this evening," 
said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. "A 
yoimg man took it. He went up to bed two hours 
ago." 

''Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?" said Mrs. 
McCool with intense admiration. "You do be a 
wonder for rentin' rooms of that kind. And did ye 
tell him, then?" she concluded in a husky whisper 
laden with mystery. 

''Rooms," said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, 
"are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. 
McCool." 

'"Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we 
kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, 
ma'am. There be many people will rayjict the 
rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been 
after dyin' in the bed of it." 

"As you say, we has our living to be making," re- 
marked Mrs. Purdy. 

"Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago 

193 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A 
pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin' herself 
wid the gas — a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, 
ma'am/' 

"She'd a-been called handsome, as you say, ' said 
IVIrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, "but for that mole 
she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow. Do fill up 
your glass again, ]\lrs. McCool." 

Beyond these two stories I do not care to go. 
But if the reader is not satisfied let him procure for 
himself the story called A Municipal Report in the 
volume "Strictly Business." After he has read it he 
will either pronounce O. Henry one of the greatest 
masters of modern fiction or else — well, or else he is a 
jackass. Let us put it that way. 

O. Henry lived some nine years in New York but 
little knowTi to the public at large. Toward the end 
there came to him success, a competence, and some- 
thing that might be called celebrity if not fame. But 
it was marvellous how his light remained hid. The 
time came when the best known magazines eagerly 
sought his work. He could have commanded his 
own price. But the notoriety of noisy success, the 
personal triumph of literary conspicuousness he 
neither achieved nor envied. A certain cruel expe- 
rience of his earlier days — tragic, unmerited, and not 
here to be recorded — had left him shy of mankind at 
large and, in the personal sense, anxious only for 
obscurity. Even when the American public in tens 

194 



THE AMAZING GENIUS OF O. HENRY 

and hundreds of thousands read his matchless stories, 
they read them, so to speak, in isolated fashion, as 
personal discoveries, unaware for years of the col- 
lective greatness of O. Henry's work viewed as a 
total. The few who were privileged to know him 
seem to have valued him beyond all others and to 
have found him even greater than his work. And 
then, in mid-career as it seemed, there was laid upon 
him the hand of a wasting and mortal disease, which 
brought him slowly to his end, his courage and his 
gentle kindliness unbroken to the last. "I shaU die," 
he said one winter with one of the quoted phrases 
that fell so aptly from his lips, "in the good old sum- 
mer time." And "in the good old summer time" 
with a smile and a jest upon his lips he died. "Don't 
turn down the light," he is reported to have said to 
those beside his bed, and then, as the words of a 
popular song flickered across his mind, he added, "I'm 
afraid to go home in the dark." 

That was in the summer of 1910. Since his death, 
his fame in America has grown greater and greater 
with every year. The laurel wreath that should have 
crowned his brow is exchanged for the garland laid 
upon his grave. And the time is coming, let us hope, 
when the whole English-speaking world will recognize 
in O. Henry one of the great masters of modern litera- 
ture. 



195 



0. HENRY: AN ENGLISH VIEW 

By a. St. John Adcock 

USUALLY, when we write of how the critics 
and the pubHc of an eariier generation were 
slow to recognize the genius of Meredith or 
Mark Rutherford, w^e do it with an air of severe 
self-righteousness which covers an impHcation that we 
in our more enlightened age are not likely to repeat 
such blunders, that the general taste and critical 
acumen of our time may safely be relied upon to 
assess contemporary authors at their true value and 
put them, with unerring promptitude, into their 
proper places. The fact is, of course, that even our 
modern literary judgments are not infallible, and 
that w^e are really in no position at all to throw stones 
at our forefathers. It were sufficient for us if we 
devoted our energies to getting the beam out of our 
own eye and left the dead past to bury its dead mis- 
takes. 

Take the very modern instance of O. Henry. 
Thousands of us are reading his stories at present and 
realizing with astonishment that he was a great 
literary artist — with astonishment because, though 
we are only just arriving at this knowledge of him, 
we learn that he commenced to write before the end 

196 



O. HENRY: AN ENGLISH VIEW 

of last century, and has been five years dead. Even 
in America, where he belonged, recognition came to 
him slowly; it was only toward the close of his life 
that he began to be counted as anything more than 
a popular magazine author; but now, in the States, 
they have sold more than a million copies of his books. 
His publishers announce in their advertisements 
that "up goes the sale of O. Henry, higher and higher 
every day," that he has "beaten the world record 
for the sale of short stories"; and the critics compete 
with each other in comparing him to Poe and Bret 
Harte, to Mark Twain and Dickens, to de Maupas- 
sant and Kipling. We cannot put ourselves right 
by saying that he was an American, for in the last 
few years at least two attempts have been made to 
introduce him to English readers, and both of them 
failed. Then a little while ago Mr. Eveleigh Nash 
embarked on a third attempt and commenced the 
publication of a uniform edition of the works of O. 
Henry In twelve three-and-slxpenny volumes. They 
hung fire a little at first, I believe, but by degrees 
made headway, and before the series was completed 
it had achieved a large and Increasing success. This 
was recently followed by an announcement of the 
issue of the twelve volumes In a shilling edition by 
Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton; the first six have ap- 
peared, and the remainder are to be published before 
the end of the year, and as the publishers estimate 
that by then, at the present rate of sale, at least 
half a million copies will have been sold, one may 

197 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

take it that, at long last, O. Henry is triumphantly 
entering into his kingdom. 

In a brilliant appreciation of The Amazing 
Genius of O. Henry,** in his new book, "Essays and 
Literary Studies" (John Lane), Professor Stephen 
Leacock speaks of the wide and increasing popularity 
of O. Henry in America, and of his ''strange obscur- 
ity" in Great Britain. He thinks it "only too likely 
that many, perhaps the majority, of British readers 
have never heard of O. Henry." That was certainly 
true when it was written, but in the last six months 
our long-suffering public has risen above the reproach. 
Professor Leacock tries to suggest a reason for our 
indifference. "The British reader turns with dis- 
taste," he says, " from anything which bears to him the 
taint of literary vulgarity or cheapness; he instinct- 
ively loves anything which seems to have the 
stamp of scholarship, and revels in a classical al- 
lusion even when he doesn't understand it." But 
for the sting in its tail and the passage that suc- 
ceeds it, I should suspect this sentence of irony, 
for the British reader received at once and with 
open arms the joyous extravagances of Max Adeler 
(who, by the way, should not have been entirely 
ignored in Professor Leacock's essay on "American 
Humour"), and there is nothing in "Elbow Room" 
or "Out of the Hurly-Burly" that is funnier or 
more quaintly humorous than some of Henry's 
stories. But O. Henry can move you to tears as 

•Keprinted in this volume, pp. 172-195. 

198 



O. HENRY: AN ENGLISH VIEW 

well as to laughter — ^you have not finished with hun 
when you have called him a humourist. He has all 
the gifts of the supreme teller of tales, is master of 
tragedy as well as of burlesque, of comedy and of 
romance, of the domestic and the mystery-tale of 
common life, and has a delicate skill in stories of the 
supernatural. Through every change of his theme 
runs a broad, genial understanding of all sorts of 
humanity, and his familiar, sometimes casually con- 
versational style conceals a finished narrative art that 
amply justifies Professor Leacock in naming him 
''one of the great masters of modern literature." He 
is not, then, of that cheap type of author from whom, 
as the Professor says, the British reader "turns with 
distaste." He has not been received among us sooner 
simply because, to repeat !Mr. Leacock' s statement, 
"the majority of British readers have never heard of 
O. Henry," and obviously until they have heard of 
him it is impossible that they should read him. 
Therefore, the blame for our not sooner appreciating 
him rests, not on our general public, but on our critics 
and publishers. If he had been adequately published, 
and adequately reviewed over here before, British 
readers must have heard of him, and their complete 
vindication lies in the fact that now, when at length 
he has been adequately published and reviewed and 
so brought to their notice, they are reading his books 
as fast as they can lay hands on them. . . . 

The life he lived was the life that was best for him. 
Every phase of it had its share in making him the 

199 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

prose troubadour that he became. Half his books 
are filled with stories that are shaped and coloured 
by his roamings, and the other haK with stories that 
he gathered in the busy ways and, particularly, in 
the byways of— "Little Old New York.'' For the 
scenes, incidents, and characters of his tales he had 
not need to travel far outside the range of his own 
experiences, and it is probably this that helps to give 
them the carelessly intimate air of reality that is 
part of their strength. He touches in his descriptions 
lightly and swiftly, yet whether he is telling of the old- 
world quaintness of North Carolina, the rough law- 
lessness of Texas, the strange glamour of New Or- 
leans, the slumberous, bizarre charm of obscure South 
American coast towns, or the noise and bustle and 
squalour and up-to-date magnificence of New York, 
his stories are steeped in colour and atmosphere. You 
come to think of his men and women less as characters 
he has drawn than as people he has known, he writes 
of them with such familiar acquaintance, and makes 
them so vividly actual to you. He is as sure and as 
cunning in the presentment of his exquisite senoritas, 
his faded, dignified Spanish grandees and planters 
and traders and picturesque rather comic-opera 
Presidents of small South American republics, as in 
drawing his wonderful gallery of Bowery boys, 
financiers, clerks, shop-girls, workers, and New York 
aristocrats. You scarcely realize them as creations, 
they seem to walk into his pages without effort. 
His women are, at least, as varied in type and as 

200 



O. HENRY: AN ENGLISH VIEW 

intensely human as his men : he wins your sympathy 
for Isabel Guilbert,* who was ''Eve after the fall 
but before the bitterness of it was felt," who ''wore 
life as a rose in her bosom," and who, according to 
Keogh, could "look at a man once, and he'll turn 
monkey and climb trees to pick cocoanuts for her," 
no less than he wins it for Norah, the seK-sacrificing 
little sewing-girl, of Blind Man's Holiday,! or the 
practical, loyally passionate wife, Santa Yeager, of 
Hearts and Crosses4 or the delightful Mrs. Cassidy 
who accepts the blows of her drunken husband as 
proof of his love (" Who else has got a right to be beat? 
I'd just like ^o catch him once beating anybody 
else!") in A Harlem Tragedy, § which would be 
grotesquely farcical if it were not for its droll air of 
truth and the curious sense of pathos that underlies 

XL* • • • 

I am not going to attempt to say which is the best 
of his tales; they vary so widely in subject and manner 
that it is impossible to compare them. There were 
moods in which he saw New York in all its solid, 
material, commonplace realism, and moods in which 
it became to him " Bagdad-on-the-Subway ," and was 
full of romance, as Soho is in Stevenson's "New 
Arabian Nights." His Wild West stories are a subtle 
blend of humour, pathos, and picturesqueness; some 
of his town and country stories delight you by their 

•See "Cabbages and Engs." 
t See "Whirligigs." 
t See "Heart of the West.** 
§ See "The Trimmed Lamp." 

201 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

homely naturalness, others are alive with sensation 
and excitement, others again are pure fantasy or 
things for nothing but laughter. Then there are such 
as "Roads of Destiny," which, with a strange dream- 
like quality, a haunting, imaginative suggestiveness, 
unfolds three stories of the same man — as one might 
see them in prevision — showing that whichever way 
of life he had chosen he would have been brought to 
the same appointed end. The eerie touch of other- 
world influences is upon you in this, as it is in The 
Door of Unrest,* an uncanny, queerly humorous 
legend of the Wandering Jew in a modern American 
city; and as it is in The Furnished Room,t which 
Professor Leacock justly singles out as one of the 
finest of O. Henry's works. **It shows O. Henry at 
his best," he says, "as a master of that supreme 
pathos that springs, with but little adventitious aid 
of time or circumstance, from the fundamental 
things of life itself. In the sheer art of narration 
there is nothing done by Maupassant that surpasses 
The Furnished Room." It could only be misrepre- 
sented in a summary, for though O. Henry always 
has a good story to tell, its effectiveness is always 
heightened immeasurably by his manner of telling it. 
It is in sheer art of narration, and in the breadth 
and depth of his knowledge of humanity and his 
sympathy with it that he chiefly excels. He was too 
big a man to be nothing but an artist, and the bigger 



• See "Sixes and Sevens." 
t See "The Four Million." 

202 



O. HENRY: AN ENGLISH VIEW 

artist for that reason. He has none of the conscious 
styHst's elaborate Uttle tricks with words, for he is a 
master of language and not its slave. He is as hap- 
pily colloquial as Kipling was in his early tales, but 
his style is as individual, as naturally his own, as a 
man's voice may be. He seems to go as he pleases, 
writing apparently just whatever words happen to 
be in the ink, yet all the while he is getting hold of his 
reader's interest, subtly shaping his narrative with 
the storyteller's unerring instinct, generally allowing 
you no glimpse of its culminating point until you are 
right on it. "The art of narrative," said Keogh, in 
*' Cabbages and Kings," "consists in concealing from 
your audience everything it wants to know until after 
you expose your favourite opinions on topics foreign 
to the subject. A good story is like a bitter pill with 
the sugar coating inside of it"; and this art O. Henry 
practises with a skill that is invariably admirable and 
at times startling. More than once he leads you 
deftly on till you arrive at what would seem an 
ingenious ending, then in a sudden paragraph he will 
give the whole thing a quick turn and land you in a 
still more ingenious climax that leaves victory in the 
hands of the character who had seemed to have lost. 
"Cabbages and Kings," a series of stories held to- 
gether by a central thread of interest, is the nearest O. 
Henry came to writing a novel. Toward the end of 
his career his publishers urged h*m to write one and 
among his papers after his death was found an un- 
finished reply to them setting out something of his 

203 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

idea of the novel he would like to attempt. It was 
to be the story of an individual, not of a type — "the 
true record of a man's thoughts, his descriptions of his 
mischances and adventures, his true opinions of life 
as he has seen it, and his absolutely honest deductions, 
comments, and views upon the different phases of life 
he passes through." It was not to be autobiography: 
*'most autobiographies are insincere from beginning 
to end. About the only chance for the truth to be 
told is in fiction." 

But his novel remains without a title in the list of 
im written books. ^Miether, if it had been written, 
it would have proved him as great an artist on the 
larger canvas as he is on the smaller, is a vain specula- 
tion and a matter of no moment. ^Tiat matters is 
that in these twelve volumes of his he has done enough 
to add much and permanently to the world's sources 
of pleasure, and enough to give him an assured place 
among the masters of modern fiction. 



204 



THE MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL 
COMEDY OF O. HENRY AND FRANKLIN P. 

ADAMS* 



A 



CHICAGO manager started the trouble. He 
wrote as follows to Mr. Adams : 



I am very anxious to secure a piece on the lines of* The 
Time, the Place, and the Girl." I say that for the reason that 
I have a star who is really a sensation, and we want to get him a 
piece that will suit him. It must be a modern character as he is 
a nice-looking fellow and I beheve in a man continuing in a char- 
acter in which he has achieved success. He is quite a fast 
talker, natty, dances very well, and sings excellently and is in 
every way very clever. We will have an opportunity to do a 
piece here by April and my ambition now is to get a play for 
him. 

O. Henry has written a story for Collier's that fits Y to the 

ground. How would you like to cooperate with him? 

The foregoing letter was received February 10, 1909. 
Mr. Adams welcomed the opportunity it presented, 
and took kindly to the idea of collaborating with O. 
Henry. 

He says: "I called on O. Henry and we discussed 
it at length. His other pseudonym was Barkis. We 

• Adapted from "Lo, the Poor Musical Comedy," by Franklin P. Adams, published in The Svo- 
ees$ Magazine, October, 1910. 

205 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

agreed to collaborate, both of us to work on the dia- 
logue and both on the lyrics. And as it happened it 
was almost a complete collaboration. Hardly an 
independent line was written. . . . 

*'We were interested in the piece and anxious to 
please the manager who had gone out of his way to 
get us. . . . O. Henry and I would convene 
nearly every afternoon and talk the thing over, out- 
lining scenes, making notes of lines of dialogue, tenta- 
tive ideas for lyrics, etc. . . . We enjoyed work- 
ing at this time. It was fun blocking out the plans 
and O. Henry was simply shedding whimsical ideas 
for lines and situations." 

The plot concerned an anthropological expedition 
to Yucatan to inquire into the theory that the Ameri- 
can Indian was descended from the ancient Aztecs. 
O. Henrj" called this aztechnology and "The Enthusi- 
aztecs" was at first suggested for the title; but the 
manager would have none of it — was pleased to say 
that it sounded like the title of an amateur per- 
formance given by the Lincoln Memorial High School, 
and even went so far as to accuse the librettists of 
offences smacking not a little of the crime of high- 
browism. 

However, "The title inspiration soon came," says 
Mr. Adams. "It was O. Henry's and I am still of 
the opinion that it was an excellent title — 'Lo.' 
As originally written the comedy emphasized the 
reversion to type of the Indian, and tried to show, as 
Pope suggested, after 

206 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

*Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind 
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind. . . .' 

that 

*To be, contents his natural desire. 
He asks no angeFs "wing, no seraph's fire.' " 

The manager accepted this title with enthusiasm, 
for "You can advertise it easy and it looks good in 
type." 

They had supposed that in the construction of a 
musical comedy the librettist first wrote some verses 
and the composer then evolved a melody to fit them. 
"But," INIr. Adams states, "most of our songs were 
constructed to fit tunes the composer had already 
written. I am not saying that this method is abso- 
lutely wrong, but it is infinitely harder work for the 
lyricist. Take an unfamiliar melody — often irregular 
as to meter — and try to fit intelligible, singable, 
rhythmical words to it. No wonder that after a 
month or two of it the barber tells you that it's 
getting pretty thin on top." 

Difficulties and disagreements with the manager 
now came thick and fast: "*Two and two,' says the 
manager, profoundly and confidentially, ^are five.' 
'But' — ^you begin. 'You're inexperienced,' says the 
manager, 'and you don't know; believe me. I've 
been in this business twenty-seven years. We need 
comedy here. Laughs is what we want, all the 
time.'" 

207 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

The Infallible manager became convinced of the 
hopelessness of their ignorance of practical theatrical 
exigencies. "The second act was bad, the first scene 
was an interior," etc., etc. He engaged another man 
to rewrite the book. \ This was done. The manager 
approved the new man's outline. But his dialogue 
was rejected wholly, and the original collaborators 
had more rewriting to do. ^ O. Henry never worked 
harder or more conscientiously on anything in his 
life. He lost weight. He worried. Day and. night 
they worked on the comedy. Again they sent on the 
completed script, this being the third or fourth "re- 
write." As they mailed it, O. Henry recited in a 
singular minor key: 

"Dramatization is vexation; 
Revision is as bad; 
THs comedy perplexes me 

And managers drive me mad ! " 

Followed more dissatisfaction on the manager's 
part, and several harassing trips to Chicago. 

But, finally, "Lo" was produced. Mr. Adams 
tells the tale: "The first performance was given in 
Aurora, Illinois, on August 25, 1909. With two 
exceptions — any members of the company who 
chance to read this will wonder who the second one I 
have in mind is — the acting was mediocre. But it 
*went' well and the unbiassed Auroran seemed to like 
it. I rather enjoyed it myself. There was no Night 
of Triumph, however. After the performance the 

£08 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

manager met me on the street. * Come to my room 
before you go to bed,' he said. ' Got to fix up that 
second act. It's rotten. ... So I did some 
more rewriting, which I think was never even tried 
out. I never heard of it, at any rate. 

"After performances in Waukegan, Illinois, and 
Janesville, Wisconsin, 'Lo' opened in Milwaukee for 
a week's engagement. It seemed to please; the news- 
papers * treated us lovely,' as the management had it. 

"But at the age of fourteen weeks it breathed its 
last, on December 5th, in St. Joseph, Missouri. Its 
parents, bearing up nobly, learned the sad news 
through a stray newspaper paragraph. . . . 

"That is the plain, unjapalacked story. I'm not 
recriminating. Taking one consideration with an- 
other, however, the librettist's lot is not a snappy^ 



one. 



What Mr. Adams calls "Lo, the Poor Musical 
Comedy," is dead and gone, and no man knoweth 
the place of its sepultxure. But most of the lyrics 
have survived. 

Mr. Adams tells us that his collaboration with O. 
Henry was unusually thoroughgoing — ^hardly an in- 
dependent line was written. But "Snap Shots" was 
all O. Henry's. 

SNAP SHOTS 

Watch out, lovers, when you promenade; 
When you kiss and coo, in the deep moon shade. 
When you're close together in the grape-vine swing, 

£09 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

When you are a-coiirting or philandering. 
;Mabel, Maud and Ann, Nellie, May and Fan, 
Keep your eyes open for the Snap Shot ^lan ! 

Snap ! Shots ! Hear the shutter close ! 

What a world of roguishness the Httle snapper shows! 

Click ! CHck ! Caught you unaware — 

Snap Shot Man'll get you if you don't take care! 

Watch out, you, Sir, when your wife's away, 
When you take your "cousin" to see the play, 
With best aisle seats, and in the bass drum row. 
And holding her hand when all the Ughts are low. 
Billy, Bob and Dan, Smith and Harrigan, 
Keep your eyes open for the Snap Shot Man ! 

Snap ! Shots ! Hear the snapper snap ! 
Got you just as safe as any squirrel in a trap. 
Click! Click! Got you just as slick — 
Cam'ra man'll snap you if you don't be quick! 

When you're swimming in your bathing suit. 

And Hubby's in town, slaving like a brute. 

And handsome young stranger, "Teach you how to swim?" 

It's not my affair, it's up to you and him. 

But, Adele and Pearl, in the water's swirl, 

Keep your eyes open for the Snap Shot Girl. 

Snap ! Shots ! Just a button pressed — 

Only seems a trifle, but the courts'll do the rest. 

Click ! Click ! Caught you P. Q. D. 

Snap Shot Girl'll get you if you trifle in the sea. 

In Yucatan, of course owes its inspiration to O. 
Henry's sojourn in the exiles' haven, Honduras. But 

210 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

its lyrical tone is so strong, the farcical so nearly 
absent, that one guesses it to be mainly from the pen 
of Mr. Adams. 



IN YUCATAN 

In a dolcefar niente 
Mood amid the fruits and flowers. 
Ladies in a land of plenty 
Idly watch the ebbing hours; 
In this paradise Utopian 
Time and tide are cornucopian; 
So we say "Festina lente" 
All the sands of time are ours. 

In Yucatan, in Yucatan, 

Land of eternal lotus chewing. 

In Yucatan, in Yucatan, 

Where sunny skies are blue as bluing. 

In Yucatan, In Yucatan, 

Oh, land of honeyed "Nothing Doing," 

Land of lyric, love, and leisure. 

Place of poetry and pleasure. 

Fairy-land of "Nothing Doing" — 

Yucatan — in Yucatan. 

Banish we the thoughts of sorrow 
In this country of the blest; 
Brood we not on a to-morrow. 
Life is only brief at best. 
In this land of summer season. 
Reck we not of rhyme or reason. 
As we puff the mild cigarro. 
Singing "Life's a merry jest." 

^11 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

In Yucatan, in Yucatan, 

Land of eternal lotus chewing, 

In Yucatan, in Yucatan, 

Where sunny skies are blue as bluing. 

In Yucatan, in Yucatan, 

Oh, land of honeyed "Nothing Doing," 

Land of lyric, love, and leisure. 

Place of poetry and pleasure. 

Fairy-land of "Nothing Doing" — 

Yucatan — in Yucatan. 

The following group of five songs was probably 
written soon after the collaborators had received a 
managerial lecture on the practical requirements of 
the theatre. They breathe the spirit of stagy sophisti- 
cation as to "what they want," and **how to get it 



over." 



LET US SING 

There is nothing new, my lady, in the lexicon of love; 

It is all as old as time. 

They were vowing by the moon and to the twinkling stars above. 

When they handed Eve the lime. 

There is nothing new to tell you, there is nothing to sing, 

There is nothing new to say; 

So you'll have to be contented with the ordinary thing, 

In the ordinary way. 

Let us sing in the manner traditional. 

For we must have a lovers* duet. 

With a silly refrain repetitional 

In a chorus you cannot forget. 

They'll applaud from Topeka to Gloversville, 

212 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL CO^MEDY 

At the mention of "Love" or a "Kiss*'; 
Oh, you bet we are lovers from Loversville 
And we love in a lyric like this : — 

LOVE IS ALL THAT MATTEBS 

An audience is generally clamorous. 

For something in the nature of a waltz; 

Be it ne'er so senseless, 

Wlierefore-less and whence-less. 

Be its logic ne'er so full of faults. 

Just let the theme and melody be amorous. 

And let the honeyed sentiment be plain; 

If the music's tuneful, 

If the words are spoon-f ul. 

Love is all you need in a refrain. 

For love is all that matters 
In a waltz refrain — 
A lilt that softly patters 
Like a summer rain; 
A theme that's worn to tatters; 
And an ancient strain. 
Yet love is all that matters 
In a waltz refrain. 

Now I might sing a song of high societj'. 

And I might sing about a lot of things. 

I might spend the time on 

Warbling you a rh^Tne on 

Anything from cabbages to kings. 

But though I have an infinite variety 

Of themes that I might sing about to you. 

There is only one thing. 

Though an overdone thing. 

Love, the olden theme that's always new. 

213 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

For love is all that matters 
In a waltz refrain — 
A lilt that softly patters 
Like a summer rain; 
A theme that's worn to tatters; 
And an ancient strain. 
Yet love is all that matters 
In a waltz refrain. 

Let who will construct a nation's laws if I may write its songs, 

As the poet used to say; 

Though it's absolutely simple if you figure what belongs 

To the usual National lay. 

Take the songs of Andalusia as presented on the stage 

By a dashing young brunette, 

Who can stamp her feet in anger and can snap her eyes in rage, 

And can smoke a cigarette. 

Let us sing in a manner Castilian 

To the twang of the gladsome guitar, 

With a colour scheme black and vermilion. 

And the music staccato bizarre; 

Let us sing all that sad senorita stuff 

To a dance that is mildly insane; 

Let us steal all that old Carmencita stuff, 

That's the way of the lovers in Spain : — 

CARAMBA 

Spanish Burlesque Song 

Caramba di Sar-sa-pa-ril-li-o, 
Cinchona, Peruna, Mon-doo; 
Bologna, Cologna, VaniUio, 
Northwestern and eke " C. B. Q." 

214 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 



Oh, Chilli con came and Piccolc 
Mazeppa di Buffalo Bill — 
So hurry and drop in your nickel-o, 
Caramba di Sar-sa-pa-rill! 

Backward, turn a little backward. Father Tempus in thy flight. 

To the days of long ago; 

When Variety was funny and a "team" was a delight 

In a biff-bang slap-stick show. 

If you'll give us your attention for a moment we will try 

Quite a job of comedy. 

For a couple of comedians you see in she and I, 

As you can quite plainly see. 

Let us sing in a way vaudeviUian, 

In the way of the "ten-twenty-thirt" 

When the "Varnishes" (Eddie and Lillian) 

Make you laugh till you honestly hurt. 

Let us hand out a sad little "mother" song, 

In a way that is truly refined; 

Let us follow it up with another song. 

Of the best song-and-danciest kind: — 

NEVER FORGET YOUR PARENTS 

A young man once was sitting 

Within a swell cafe. 

The music it did play so sweet, 

The people were so gay. 

But he alone was silent, 

A tear was in his eye, 

A waitress she stepped up to him. 

And asked him gently why. 

He turned to her in sorrow. 

And at first he spoke no word; 

But soon he spoke unto her, 

£15 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

For she was an honest girl. 
He rose up from that table, 
In that elegant cafe. 
And in a voice replete with tears. 
To her, he then did say : 

"Never forget your father 
Think all he done for you 
Do not desert your mother dear. 
So loving, kind, and true. 
Think of all they have gave you — 
Do not cast it away — 
For if it had not been for them 
We would not be here to-day.'* 

WHILE STROLLIXG THRO' THE FOREST 

While strolling thro' the forest 

Upon a summer's day, 

I chanced to see, and she smiled at me, 

A lady and her name was May. 

Oh my! Wasn't she a beaut! 

Root-ti-toot, ti-toot-ti-toot-ti-toot ! 

She's the neatest, she's the sweetest, 

She's also the completest. 

She's the lady who I dearly love, 

And — ah — this is — ah — what she said: 

We have tried for to amuse you 
With our remarks so bright. 
And now that we have finished, 
We're going to say good-night. 
We are chatty, we are happy. 
And we think the same of you. 
And with your kind permission 
We're going to say "Adoo." 

216 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

Dear Yankee Maid, one guesses, was intended 
to suit the requirements of the manager's protege, the 
nice-looking fellow who danced well and sang excel- 
lently; and You May Always Be My Sweetheart 
was a duet to be sung probably by this paragon and 
the leading lady. 

DEAR YANKEE MAID 

There's a lilt that is tuneful and f etchin' ! 
When you sing of an Irish colleen; 
And the lyrical praise of a Gretchen 
Is a theme that is fit for a queen; 
The bewitching young lady of Paris — 
She may hold many fast in her thrall — 
But this song (which is published by Harris) 
Is to tell of the best of them all. 

Yankee maid! My Yankee maid! 
You are the one best bet. 

You are the goods, with duty prepaid. 
You are the finest yet. 

1 am for you, brown eyes or blue. 
Tresses of gold or jet. 

I serenade you, Yankee maid; 
You are the one best bet. 

Of the maiden seductive and Spanish, 
There is many a song has been sung. 
And the ladies Norwegian and Danish 
Were a theme when Columbus was yoimg; 
Oh, the ladies of England are pretty; 
There are those who declare for the Jap. 
But the best is the girl of this ditty, 
Yankee maids are the best on the map. ; 

217 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Yankee maid! My Yankee maid! 
You are the one best bet. 

You are the goods, with duty prepaid. 
You are the finest yet. 

1 am for you, brown eyes or blue, 
Tresses of gold or jet. 

I serenade you, Yankee maid; 
You are the one best bet. 



YOU MAY ALWAYS BE MY SWEETHEART 

(If You Care to Be) 

A maid of simple station, I, unlearned in lovers' lore, 

Sweetly shy; 
The art of osculation I had never tried before, 

Which is why 
Your recent demonstration of that proud and manly art — 

Is it plain? — 
Has caused a queer sensation in the region of my heart. 

And this refrain: 

I've never had a sweetheart, for I've been fancy free. 
My heart's been locked to lovers, and there's no key. 
But if you should continue to be so kind to me. 
You may always be my sweetheart if you care to be. 

Dear Madam: Contents noted in your favour of this date; 

I remain 
As ever. Yours Devotedly — P. S., I beg to state 

And explain 
Your recent proposition has a sweet and pleasant sound 

To my ears, 
'Twill be my fond ambition just to have you stick around 

A million years. 

218 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

I've never had a sweetheart, for IVe been fancy free. 
My heart's been locked to lovers, and there's no key. 
But if you should continue to be so kind to me, 
I will always be your sweetheart if you'll let me be. 

The Statue Song was written as a substitute 
for one the composer was guilty of, to fit a tune 
which was described as "a lutherburbank of ' Anitra's 
Dance' in the Peer Gynt suite and Moskowski's 
'Spanish Dance.'" 

STATUE SONG 

Idol of my race, I sing. 
Humbly kneeling at thy shrine. 
Take the sacrifice I bring; 
All that I possess is thine: 

Humbly kneeling at thy shrine. 
Let me chant my idol song. 
All that I possess is thine, 
I have loved thee overlong, 

Let me chant my idol song. 
Take the sacrifice I bring. 
I have loved thee overlong. 
Idol of my race I sing. 

Beloved let me lay these at thy feet — 

These flowers of forge tfulness so sweet. 

Forsake thou thoughts of other days and pride, 

And come thou back with me, thine Indian bride, 

Untamed and free. 

Return to me 

Thine own predestined bride. 

219 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Little Old Main Street is a protest and natural 
reaction from the wave of Broadway and Little-Old- 
New York songs which for so long inundated long- 
suffering Oshkosh and Kalamazoo. 

LITTLE OLD :\L\IN STREET 

SiQgers may boast about Broadway, 

And they most generally do: 

Spring all that flowery fluff on the Bowery — 

Take it, I'll stake it to you; 

Call me a yap if you care to, 

Say I'm a rube or a shine, 

But give me the street that has got 'em all beat — 

Little old Main Street for mine. 

Little old Main Street for mine ! 

Take a look at the lovers in line — 

Three \dllage charmers and twenty-eight farmers. 

All meeting the six-twenty-nine — 

Little old Main Street for mine, 

When you're back with the pigs and the kine, 

Broadway and such for Your Uncle? Not much 

For it's Little old Main Street for mine. 

Sing if you must of your State Street, 

Sing of the Bois and the Strand, 

And if you have a new song of the Avenue, 

Sing it to beat the old band! 

Sing of the streets of the city, 

Not for Yours Truly—" LTi, LTi ! " 

But give me the street of the \^age elite; 

Little old Main Street for muh ! 

£20 



MISADVENTURES IN MUSICAL COMEDY 

Little old Main Street for mine, 

And right down by the Post Oflfice sign 

Hear 'em say "Well, what a long rainy spell! 

But it looks like to-morrow'll be fine." 

Little old Main Street for mine, 

Where it's dead at a quarter past nine 

See the folks flock past the Opry-House block, 

Oh, it's little old Main Street for mine. 

"It's the Little Things that Count," even in the 
success of a musical comedy. A few trijBes like the 
following would have gone far toward making a 
Broadway success. 

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS THAT COUNT 

Girl — Little drops of water, little grains of sand. 

Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land J 
Boy — ■ Little drops of seltzer, little drops of rye. 

Make the pleasant highball, when a man is dry. 
Both — ^It's the little things that count, ev'ry where you go; 

Trifles make a large amount. Don't you find it so? 
Girl — ^Little deeds of kindness, little words of love. 

Make our life an Eden, like the heaven above. 
Boy — Little drops of promise, made to little wives. 

Make us little fibbers all our little lives. 
Both — It's the little things that count, ev'rywhere you go; 

Trifles make a large amount. Don't you find it so? 



221 



O. HENRY IN HIS OWN BAGDAD 
By George Jean Nathan 

IN THE summer of 1908 William Sydney Porter 
and Robert Hobart Davis, alias "O. Henry" 
and "Bob" Davis respectively — and likewise 
respectively one of the greatest of American short- 
story writers and one of the greatest rejectors of all 
species of stories — were discussing the merits and 
demerits of New York City during the tropical, as- 
phalt-smelly season. "Let's get out of it for a few 
days," suggested Davis. "I'll take you to a wonder- 
ful place down on Long Island, w^here the fishing is 
immense and the fish correspondingly large." 

"Well," said Henry, "New York is a bit warm and 
I'll just take you up." 

They started. They arrived. Fishing tackle was 
put in order; collars and coats were cast aside; Henry 
expressed admiration at the ability of the masculine 
natives to expectorate tobacco juice "as far as the 
eye could see"; Davis lit a cigar; and the expedition 
was off. It was a mile walk. "We won't ride, 
because the exercise will do us good," suggested 
Davis. Henry assented. The day was gray-blue 
and sizzling. They had not gone more than three 
city blocks when Henry was already drenched with 

222 



O. HENRY IN HIS OWN BAGDAD 

perspiration. But he kept on manfully. A little 
way farther on, however, Davis noticed that his 
companion was desperately endeavouring to find 
something In his trousers' pockets. "What are you 
looking for.f^" he asked. "I am looking for my re- 
turn ticket to New York," replied Henry positively, 
"and let me tell you that as soon as I find It, I'm go- 
ing to take a 'hitch' on a wagon and go back — fast! 
I know It's blamed hot In town, but there are just 
as good fish left on the menu as there are In the 

99 

sea. 

"Bagdad," asO. Henry referred to New York In his 
modern Arabian Nights, was. In his own words 
to a close friend, "the cosy haven for everybody. In- 
cluding amateur fishermen and other disappointed 
persons." O. Henry loved the metropolis, and Its 
intense heat or cold made little change In his affec- 
tion for It. "If you like the city so well, then," he 
was once asked, "why do you live In AshevIUe so 
much of the tlme.'^ " " Because," he answered, " New 
York gets Into my veins so strongly that I have to go 
away from It when I want to work. For the same 
reason, I venture, that a man who Is deeply In love 
with a woman can't think of anything but that wo- 
man when he Is anywhere near her." 

During his frequent visits In his own skyscraper- 
filled Bagdad, this literary Haroun-al-RaschId 
prowled about In curious corners, brushed up against 
curious Individuals, and ferreted out curious secrets, 
curious heart mysteries, and curious little lights on 

223 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

the human machine — all of which subsequently found 
their way into his stories. Some of his adventures 
while Haroun-al-Raschiding must, therefore, possess 
interest for the vast reading throng that has smiled 
and felt a tear while turning his pages. It was during 
one of his prowling tours several years ago that O. 
Henry, with H. H. McClure, who suggested the writ- 
ing of the modern Arabian Nights tales to the 
short-story king, was seated in a Broadway restaur- 
ant at luncheon. "WTiat are you going to do to- 
night?" asked McClure. "I'm going to persuade 
a 'hobo' to give me three hundred dollars," answered 
the writer. "On a bet?" asked McClure. "Not at 
all," replied O. Henry, "that's the price of a story 
and I'm going to rub up against some tramps down 
on the Bowery until one of them suggests the plot to 
me." That night O. Henry did travel downtown and 
started on a Haroun-al-Raschld expedition in the 
vicinity of the famous bread-line. His genial, well- 
fleshed personality always stood him in good stead, 
and no matter how tough the community he chanced 
to enter, unpleasantness of any sort was a rare oc- 
currence. When he talked with a "hobo" he was a 
"hobo." When he talked with a railroad president 
he was a railroad president. O. Henry was a cha- 
meleon of conversation and of what is known collo- 
quially as "front." He always took on the air — it 
seemed — of the person to whom he was talking. 
One of his friends has said of him that there was no 
better "mixer" in the world — and the truth of the 

224 



O. HENRY IN HIS OWN BAGDAD 

statement is borne out by a survey of the intimate 
and varied insight revealed in his diverse writings. 
On the night in question O. Henry moved around 
among the Bowery derehcts until he finally got into 
touch with a typical *'bum." They strolled down 
the street a way together and asked a passer-by 
for the time. "Almost midnight," said the latter. 
"Gee," remarked Henry to his tattered companion. 
"I feel like a cup o' coffee. Come on, I've got a 
quarter and we'll blow some of it in this place." 
They entered the dingy eating-house, sat up to the 
counter and each ordered a cup of coffee and a ham 
sandwich. Although the two men had now been 
together for some time, the short-story writer had 
detected the gleam of nothing definite in the tramp 
that promised to provide the "copy" he was seeking. 
But he felt sure he had picked his man right and he 
felt equally sure that the fellow sooner or later would 
unconsciously suggest to him something or other by 
which he would profit. O. Henry rarely "led" the 
conversation. He preferred to let it come naturally. 
He said nothing to his companion, who was busily 
concerning himself with the food before him. When 
they had finished and had reached the street, Henry 
suggested that they walk leisurely up the Bowery 
and see if there was anything to be seen. They 
wandered around aimlessly for fully an hour and a half 
and then Henry said he felt like having another cup 
of coffee. The two men went into another eating- 
place and ordered two cups of coffee — at two cents a 

225 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

cup. Then they walked around some more, but still 
Henry had succeeded in getting no idea from his 
bedraggled companion. Finally, tired out, he told 
the latter he was going to leave him. He reached 
out his hand to "shake" with the tramp and, as 
their hands met, Henry suddenly surprised the 
" hobo " by laughing. " ^Vhat's up, cull.?^ " asked the 
latter. "Oh, nothin'," replied Henry, "I just 
thought of something." This was true, as he after- 
ward confessed, the "something" in point having 
been an odd twist for a new story. But the oddest 
twist to this particular Haroun-al-Raschid anecdote 
— and a typical O. Henry twist it is — is the fact that 
the idea O. Henry suddenly got for his story had 
absolutely nothing to do with the Bowery, with 
tramps, with two-cent coffee, or anything even re- 
motely related thereto. "Well, then," remarked a 
friend to whom he had narrated the incident, "what 
good did the Bowery sojourn do you? You didn't 
get your three-hundred-dollar idea from a tramp 
after all, did you?" 

"Indeed, I did," replied O. Henry. "That is, in 
a way. The tramp didn't give me the idea, to be 
sure, but he did not drive it out of my head — which 
is just as important. If I had not gone down on the 
Bowery and had chosen an uptown friend for a com- 
panion instead of that tramp, my more cultured com- 
panion would not have allowed me a moment's 
conversational respite in which my mind could have 
worked, and, as a consequence, the idea would nevei 

226 



O. HENRY IN HIS OWN BAGDAD 

have come to me. So, you see, the Bowery 'hobo' 
served a lot of good, after all." 

Strolling through Madison Square one night after 
the theatre, O. Henry came upon a young girl crying 
as if her heart were surely cracking, if not abeady 
broken. The man with Henry, his pity and sym- 
pathy aroused, w^alked over to the girl, touched her 
on the shoulder, and inquired into the cause of her 
grief. It developed that the girl had come to the 
city from a town in central New Jersey, had lost her 
way, and was without money, friends, or a place to 
sleep. Deeply touched, the man with the short- 
story writer gave the girl a couple of dollars, put her 
in charge of a policeman, whose latent sympathy he 
managed to arouse with a one-dollar bill, and, satis- 
fied with his act of charity, locked arms with Henry 
and continued on through the dark square toward 
Twenty-third Street. "Why didn't you speak to 
her.f^" he asked Henry. ''I'll bet there was a cork- 
ing story in that girl that you could have dragged 
out." O. Henry smiled. "Old man," he said, 
"there never is a story where there seems to be 
one. That's one rule I always work on — it saves 
time and, let me see — two plus one — ^yes, three 
dollars!" 

O. Henry's metropolitan sales- and shop-girl types 
are well known to his readers. "Do you ever go into 
the department stores to study them?" some one 
once asked the writer. "Indeed, not," answered 
the latter. " It is not the sales-girl in the department 

227 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

store who is worth studying, it is the sales-girl out of 
it. You can't get romance over a counter." 

With two friends O. Henry was walking down 
Broadway one evening in December — Broadway, the 
sack of New York *^life," the big paper Bagdad out 
of which O. Henry drew many of his characters. 
Near Herald Square the men were approached by a 
rather well-dressed young man who, in a calm, gentle 
voice, told his "hard luck story" and begged for the 
*'loan" of a quarter. One of the men handed over 
the twenty -five cents to the stranger and the latter 
disappeared quickly 'round the corner into Thirty- 
sixth Street. "Seemed like an honest, worthy 
chap," remarked the man who had parted with 
the quarter. "Yes," added O. Henry quietly, "he 
seemed like an honest, worthy chap to me, too — ^last 
night." 

WTiile walking down Broadway on another occa- 
sion, O. Henry accidentally bumped against a man 
who was not looking in the direction he was walking. 
"I beg your pardon," said Henry, "but really you 
ought to look where you are going." "If I did in 
this town, I probably wouldn't go," replied the man 
with a sarcastic smile. "Ah," said O. Henry quickly, 
"and how are all the folks in Chicago.'^" 

\Mien O. Henry collaborated with F. P. Adams in 
writing the libretto for the musical comedy " Lo," a 
friend said to him: "Adams says he got the idea for 
his share of the play from a cheque for advance roy- 
altieso WTiere did you get the idea for your share.^^" 

228 



0. HENRY IN fflS OWN BAGDAD 

"From the hojpe for a cheque for advance royalties," 
he answered. 

TMiile ''Harouning" along the river front one night, 
O. Henry happened upon a couple of sailors, one of 
whom was much the worse for liquor. **I see your 
friend is intoxicated," he remarked to the sober 
sailor. '*You don't say!" exclaimed the latter in 
mock astonishment. And the short-story king ap- 
preciated the answer at his expense as much as did 
those to whom he subsequently repeated it. O. 
Henry never missed a favourable opportunity to have 
a chat with an amiable policeman. " Policemen know 
so many odd things and so few necessary ones," he 
would remark. TMiile talking with one of the blue- 
coats in Hell's Kitchen one night, years ago, Henry 
said that they were suddenly startled — at least, that 
he was — ^by two loud revolver shots. "Some one's 
been killed!" he exclaimed. "No, don't worry," re- 
turned the "cop" coolly, "only injured. It takes at 
least three bullets to kill any one in this part of town." 



229 



O. HENRY— APOTHECARY* 
By Christopher Morley 

WHERE once lie used camphor, glycerin. 
Cloves, aloes, potash, peppermint in bars. 
And all the oils and essences so keen 
That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars — 
Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile, ' 

The master pharmacist of joy and pain 
Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile 
And laughter that dissolves in tears again.A 

O brave apothecary! You who knew 
What dark and acid doses life prefers. 

And yet with smiling face resolved to brew 
These sparkling potions for your customers — 

Glowing with globes of red and purple glass 
Your widow gladdens travellers who pass. 

* From • volume of lir. Morley'i poemj publiahed by the George H. Doran Company. 



230 



O, HENRY* 
By William Lyon Phelps 

IN North Carolina they have just erected a me- 
morial to " O.Henry." He was aprof oundly sincere 
artist, as is shown, not only in his finished work 
but in his private correspondence. His worst defect was 
a fear and hatred of conventionality; he had such mor- 
tal terror of stock phrases that, as some one has said, 
he wrote no English at all — ^he wrote the dot, dash, 
telegraphic style. Yet leaving aside all his perversi- 
ties and his whimsicalities, and the poorer part of 
his work where the desire to be original is more mani- 
fest than any valuable result of it, there remain a 
sufficient number of transcripts from life and inter- 
pretations of it to give him abiding fame. There is 
a humorous tenderness in The Whirligig of Life,t 
and profound ethical passion in A Blackjack Bar- 
gainer.f A highly intelligent though unfavourable 
criticism of Porter that came to me in a private letter 
— I wish it might be printed — condemns him for the 
vagaries of his plots — ^which remind my correspond- 
ent of the quite serious criticism he read in a Phila- 
delphia newspaper, which spoke of "the interesting 
but hardly credible adventures of Ulysses." Now 

• From "The Advance of the English Novel," by VTilliam Lyon Phelps, Dodd, Mead & Ca, 191C. 

t See "WhirUgigs,'* 

231 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

hyperbole is a great American failing; and Porter 
was so out and out American that this disease of art 
raised blotches on his work. Yet his best emphasis 
is placed where it belongs. 

No writer of distinction has, I think, been more 
closely identified with the short story in English than 
O. Henry. Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, 
Stevenson, Kipling attained fame in other fields; 
but although Porter had his mind fully made up to 
launch what he hoped would be the great American 
novel, the veto of death intervened, and the many 
volumes of his "complete works" are made up of 
brevities. The essential truthfulness of his art is 
what gave his work immediate recognition, and ac- 
counts for his rise from journalism to literature. 
There is poignancy in his pathos; desolation in his 
tragedy; and his extraordinary humour is full of 
those sudden surprises that give us delight. Uncrit- 
ical readers have never been so deeply impressed with 
O. Henry as have the professional, jaded critics, 
weary of the old trick a thousand times repeated, 
who found in his writings a freshness and originality 
amounting to genius. 



232 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

By Arthur Bartlett Maurice 

I 

THE HEART OF o'hENRY-LAND 

IRVING PLACE, beginning at Fourteenth Street, 
runs north for six blocks to perish against the 
iron paUngs that line the southerly side of Gram- 
erey Park. HaK way up, on the west side of the 
thoroughfare, between Seventeenth and Eighteenth 
streets, there is a dingy, four-story, brownstone 
house. The shutters are up. The casements of the 
upper stories frame vacancy. That vacancy stares 
down at the passer-by with a kind of hurt blindness. 
It is as if the structure itself was conscious of an im- 
minent demise, of a swiftly coming demolition. For 
next year, next month, next week, to-morrow, per- 
haps, the old ramshackle edifice will be gone, with a 
towering skyscraper springing up on the site. The 
number of the building is 55. There, in the front 
room on the second floor, William Sydney Porter lived 
in the days when he was learning to read the heart of 
the Big City of Razzle-Dazzle. And as he was con- 
stitutionally opposed to anything that involved ar- 
duous physical exercise, the quintessence of O'Henry- 

233 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Land lies within a circle of haK a mile radius, with 
No. 55 as the centre. 

Within that circle may be found the hotels of the 
Spanish-American New York stories, Chubbs' Third 
Avenue Restaurant, the Old Munich of The Hal- 
berdier of the Little Rheinschloss,* the particular 
saloon which served as the background for The 
Lost Blend t — as a matter of fact that saloon is di- 
rectly across the street from No. 55 and behind the 
bar there presides a white-aproned, genial cocktail 
mixer who will answer to the name of "Con" just as 
in the storv^ — the four sides of Gramercy Park which 
are so conspicuous in the tales of aristocratic flavour, 
the bench — which could be confused with no other 
bench in the world — which StufiPy Pete, one of Two 
Thanksgiving-day Gentlemen, J regarded in the light of 
personal property, and those other benches in the other 
square, a few blocks to the north, where prepossess- 
ing yoimg women, inspired by Robert Louis Steven- 
son's *'New Arabian Nights," were moved to ro- 
mantic narrative, where disconsolate caliphs, shorn 
of their power, sat brooding over the judgments of 
Allah, where fifth wheels rolled along asphalted pave- 
ments and djinns came obedient to the rubbing of the 
lamp. 

To Mr. Robert Rudd \Miiting, with whom he had 
been associated in the early days when he first began 



•See "Roads of Destiny." 
t See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
X See "The Trimmed Lamp." 

234 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

to contribute to the columns of Ainslee's Magazine, 
Sydney Porter once extended a luncheon invitation. 
It was to be a Spanish-American luncheon in the 
course of which O. Henry was to introduce his guest 
to certain flavours and dishes that he, himself, had 
learned to like or at least to endure in the days of his 
exile in the Lands of the Lotus Eaters. The two 
men were crossing Union Square. " Come with me," 
said Porter, "I will show you the real place. Over at 

M 's [he mentioned a restaurant in a street to 

the south] you may find the Senors, the Capitans, 
the Majors, the Colonels. But if you would sit 
with the Generalissimos, the Imperators, the truly 
exalted who hail from Central and South American 
countries, accept my guiding hand." So from the 
Square they turned in Fifteenth Street and found, on 
the south side, some seventy-five yards east of 
Fourth Avenue, the Hotel America, with its clientele 
of gesticulating Latins, who, if not planning revolu- 
tion, had all the outward appearance of arch-con- 
spirators. It was the atmosphere that went to the 
making of The Gold that Glittered,* which, if the 
reader remembers, began at the very spot at which 
the invitation had been extended "where Broadway 
skirts the corner of the Square presided over by 
George the Veracious." 

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschlossf 
dealt with a restaurant which O. Henry designated 



• See "Strictly Business." 
t See "Roads of Destiny." 

235 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

as Old Munich. Long ago, the story-teller told us, 
it was the resort of interesting Bohemians, but now 
"only artists and musicians and literary folk fre- 
quent it." For many years, so the tale runs, the 
customers of Old Munich have accepted the place 
as a faithful copy from the ancient German town. 
The big hall, with its smoky rafters, rows of im- 
ported steins, portrait of Goethe, and verses printed 
on the walls — translated into German from the orig- 
inal of the Cincinnati Poets — seemed atmospheric- 
ally correct when viewed through the bottom of a 
glass. Then the proprietors rented the room above, 
called it the Little Rheinschloss, and built in a stair- 
way. Up there was an imitation stone parapet, 
ivy-covered, and the walls painted to represent depth 
and distance, with the Rhine winding at the base of 
the vineyarded slopes and the Castle of Ehrenbreit- 
stein looming directly opposite the entrance. To 
Old Munich came the young man with the wrecked 
good clothes and the hungry look, to assume the 
armour of the ancient halberdier and, on a certain 
momentous evening, to be confiscated by the aristo- 
crats to serve menially at the banquet-board. 

As the tale had always been an especial favourite, 
the present writer had ventured into many parts of 
the city in his search for the background that would 
best fit the O. Henry description. For a time the 
hunt seemed vain. But one day he spoke to Mr. 
Gilman Hall on the subject. The latter laughed. 
"Do I know the real Old Munich? Very well, in- 

236 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

deed. Often I dined there with Porter. No wonder 
you have not found it. You have been looking too 
far to the north, to the south, to the west. Don't 
you reaUze that Porter would never have walked that 
far if he could have helped it? The only time I ever 
persuaded him afoot as far as Seventy-second Street 
and Riverside Drive, he stopped, and, with an injured 
air, asked if we had not yet passed Peekskill. We 
are just before his old home, No. 55, Why not try 
round the corner?" So fifty feet to the south, and a 
short block to the east, in the restaurant and beer- 
hall known to some as Allaire's and to others as 
SchefiFel Hall, the setting of the tale was found. There 
was a natural free-hand swing to certain parts of the 
O. Henry descriptions, but even without the cor- 
roboration of those who knew personally of Porter's 
associations with the place, one glance at the long 
raftered room is enough to stamp it as the place where 
the waiter known simply as No. 18 witnessed the 
comedy of the hot soup tureen and the blistered 
hands, and William Deering finished the three 
months of earning his own living without once being 
discharged for incompetence 

, n 

THE O. HENRY APPEAL 

Three or four years ago, in the columns of a liter- 
ary magazine of which he was then the editor, the 
present writer invited the expression of various opin- 

237 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

ions with the idea of finding out which of the stories 
of O. Henry had had the widest appeal. To the per- 
son whom he then designated as The Thousandth 
Reader he presented ten volumes of the short stories. 
She was being introduced for the first time to the 
work of O. Henry, and for a month, day after day, 
she gave herself over to the two hundred and fifty 
odd tales of the modern Scheherazade. When she 
had finished the last story he asked her to jot down 
the names of the ten that had most appealed to her, 
in the order of their appeal. Her choice was in many 
ways so surprising that it suggested the symposium. 
This was the list of The Thousandth Reader: 

1. A Municipal Report. 

£. The Pendulum. 

3. A Blackjack Bargainer. 

4. A Retrieved Reformation. 

5. The Furnished Room. 

6. The Hypotheses of Failure. 

7. Roads of Destiny. 

8. Next to Reading Matter. 

9. The Enchanted Profile. 
10. Two Renegades. 

To that list the present writer decided to add nine 
others. First were three from men who were them- 
selves spinners of tales. Booth Tarkington, Owen 
Johnson, and George Barr McCutcheon. 

Mr. Tarkington, commenting upon his list, said: 
*'The ten are not his best stories. I don't know 
which his *best' are, of course. These ten are what 

238 



ABOUT NEW YORK WLTR 0. HENRY 

you asked for — the ten I have enjoyed most. There 
is one I wanted to mclude. The boy who went to 
war after the girl flouted him and came back the town 
hero and said to her (she was married then) : ' Oh, I 
don't know — ^maybe I could if I tried ! ' but I couldn't 
remember the title and couldn't find it." (The 
title of the story Mr. Tarkington had in mind was 
The Moment of Victory in "Options.") 

Mr. Tarkington's list: 

1. The Ransom of Red Chief. 

2. The Harbinger. 

3. The Passing of Black Eagle. 

4. Squaring the Circle. 

5. Past One at Rooney's. 

6. The Handbook of Hymen. 

7. Strictly Business. 

8. The Clarion Call. 

9. Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet. 
10. The Memento. 

The following titles represented the choice of Mr. 
Owen Johnson : 

1. An Unfinished Story. 

2. A Municipal Report. 

3. The Rose of Dixie. 

4. A Lickpenny Lover. 

5. According to Their Lights. 

6. Mammon and the Archer. 

7. The Defeat of the City. 

8. The Girl and the Graft. 

9. The Shamrock and the Palm. 
10. The Pendulum. 

239 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Mr. George Barr McCutcheon's list: 

1. The Tale of a Tainted Tenner. 

2. Let Me Feel Your Pulse. 

3. A Fog in Santone. 

4. The Lost Blend. 

5. The Duplicity of Hargraves. 

6. The Marquis and !Miss Sally. 

7. The Gift of the Magi. 

8. A Cosmopolite in a Caf6. 

9. According to Their Lights. 
10. The Making of a New Yorker. 

Fifth in order, but naturally first in sentimental 
interest, was the list indicating the feelings of The 
One Who Knew Him Best — Mrs. William Sydney 
Porter. It was in a very beautiful letter that Mrs. 
Porter told of her preferences. To her the stories 
were Mr. Porter. She found it hard to name them 
in a list in order. But immediately one story came 
to her mind. That was A Municipal Report.* 

*' After all," she wrote, **I am not sure that it is 
the story — good as it is — for O. Henry's own face 
lifts from a Nashville 'roast' that was given that 
story and I hear his puzzled, *^\Tiy did it offend.'^ 
Do you see anything in it that should offend.^' The 
Fifth WTieelf — and we stand together on Madison 
Square in the deep snow, or the biting wind, looking 
at the line waiting for beds. WTien we turn away 
ten men have found shelter. The recording angel 



• See "Strictly Biuiness." 
t Sec "Strictly Busineai." 

240 



ABOUT NEW YORK T\1TH 0. HENHY 

must have seen us there some of the snowy nights of 
1908. He must have known that when we turned 
homeward there were times when O. Henry had not 
a dollar fifty left in his pocket." One story in Mrs. 
Porter's list likely to surprise readers is Madame 
Bo-Peep of the Ranches.* But Mrs. Porter said 
that that story figured largely in her own life. In the 
spring of 1905 her mother came home from Greens- 
boro and said to her: "Your old friend Will Porter 
is a writer. He lives in New York and writes imder 
the name of O. Henry." "O. Henry! In my desk 
lay Madame Bo-Peep and I loved her. I wrote 
O. Henry a note. 'If you are not Will Porter don't 
bother to answer,' I said. He bothered to answer. 
The letter came as fast as Uncle Sam could bring it. 
*Some day when you are not real busy,' he wrote, 
* won't you sit down at your desk where you keep 
those antiquated stories and write to me? I'd be 
so pleased to hear something about what the years 
have done for you, and what you think about when 
the tree frogs begin to holler in the evening.' Thus 
after many years a boy and girl friendship was re- 
newed. Last in my list, but first in my heart, is 
Adventures in Neurasthenia, the new title. Let 
Me Feel Your Pulse,t the publishers gave. It 
brings back the little office in Asheville, the pad, 
empty except for the title and the words: 'So I went 
to a doctor.' So often at the last the pad was empty. 



• See "WHrligigs." 

t See "Sixes and ScTeos." 

241 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

The sharp pencil points in their waiting seemed to me 
to mock the empty pencil, the wean^ brain. The pic- 
ture is too vivid." This was Mrs. Porter's list: 

1. A Municipal Report. 

2. The Fifth \Mieel. 

3. A Lickpenny Lover. 

4. A Doubledyed Deceiver. 

5. Brickdust Row. 

6. The Trimmed Lamp. 

7. The Brief Debut of Tildy. 

8. An Unfinished Story. 

9. Madame Bo-Peep of the Ranches. 
10. Let Me Feel Your Pulse. 

The sixth list was from a man (incidentally he 
was one of O. Henry's closest friends in the New 
York years) who has read, accepted, and rejected 
more short stories than any other man in the world. 
That man was ^Ir. Robert H. Davis, and among the 
accepted stories were many of the stories of O. Henry. 
Prefacing his selection, Mr. Davis expressed the opin- 
ion that The Last Leaf ^ would become more im- 
pressive as he grew older, whereas at the time of 
writing A Tempered Windf and An Unfinished 
Story X entertained him greatly. There were times 
when he laughed inordinately at The Handbook of 
Hymen § and Hostages to Momus.** "It is rather 

•See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
t See "The Gentle Grafter." 
t See "The Four Million." 
§ See "Heart of the West." 
•• See "The Gentle Grafter." 

242 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

remarkable," wrote Mr. Davis, "that a man of his 
temperament could do so many good stories under 
the high pressure of necessity. He was buoyant and 
lazy in prosperity, depressed and productive in ad- 
versity. How few of the millions who read him know 
what it cost O. Henry to make them laugh!" These 
were the ten tales that had been caught in the meshes 
of Mr. Davis's memory: 

1. A Tempered Wind. 

2. The Last Leaf. 

3. An Unfinished Story. 

4. Hostages to Momus. 

5. The Trimmed Lamp. 

6. Friend Telemachus. 

7. The Handbook of Hymen. 

8. The Moment of Victory. 

9. The Ethics of Pig. 
10. A Technical Error. 

The. following list made by Mr. Arthur W. Page 
represents, in a measure, the opinion of Mr. Porter's 
publishers: 

1. The Rose of Dixie. 

2. The Gift of the Magi. 

3. The Cop and the Anthem. 

4. Let Me Feel Your Pulse. 

5. An Unfinished Story. 

6. A Municipal Report. 

7. The Guardian of the Accolade. 

8. Witches' Loaves. 

9. Hearts and Crosses. 
10. The Fifth Wheel. 

MS 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Many persons have come forward claiming to 
have discovered O. Henry. Some of these claims 
have come from sources that would have moved Syd- 
ney Porter himself to mingled delight and astonish- 
ment. But the man who was responsible for O. 
Henry's going to New York, who persuaded the 
publisher of a magazine to forward the money that 
made the journey possible, was Mr. Gilman Hall. 
So among all claimants Mr. Hall has the best title 
to recognition as O. Henry's discoverer. Mr. Hall's 
list: 

1. An Unfinished Story. 

2. A Municipal Report. 

3. Roads of Destiny. 

4. The Buyer from Cactus City. 

5. The Furnished Room. 

6. The Passing of Black Eagle. 

7. The Gift of the Magi. 

8. From the Cabby's Seat. 

9. Brickdust Row. 

10. A Retrieved Reformation. 

To the opinions of writers of stories and buyers of 
stories it was thought wise to add the point of view 
of those whose business it is to sell stories. Three 
literary agents were consulted. This is a composite 
list representing their opinions: 

1. A Harlem Tragedy. 

2. Mammon and the Archer 

3. A Lickpenny Lover. 

4. The Furnished Room. 

5. The Marry Month of May. 

244 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

6. The Gift of the Magi. 

7. The Enchanted Profile. 

8. An Unfinished Story. 

9. The Last Leaf. 

10. The Thing's the Play. 

In conclusion the present writer insisted in pre- 
senting a list indicating his own favourites. It was 
as follows: 

1. The Defeat of the City. 

2. Mammon and the Archer. 

3. The Furnished Room. 

4. The Shamrock and the Palm. 

5. The Halberdier of the Rheinschloss. 

6. The Lost Blend. 

7. A Lickpenny Lover. 

8. A Municipal Report. 

9. Two Renegades. 
10. Thimble, Thimble. 

Curious indeed, is the story told by these lists. 
It illustrates strikingly the wide range of O. Henry's 
appeal. Ten lists of ten tales apiece, and sixty-two 
different titles, most of them appearing on but one 
list. A few favourites there are: A Municipal 
Report* (the narrative which probably shows its 
author at the highwater mark of his powers) with six 
mentions; An Unfinished Story f with seven men- 
tions; A Lickpenny Lover, J The Gift of the 
Magijf and The Furnished Room,f with four men- 
tions; and The Mammon and the Archerf and 

• See "Strictly Business." 
t See "The Four Million." 
X See "The Voioe of the City." 

245 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Let Me Feel Your Pulse* with three mentions. 
On the basis of these lists the New York stories have 
had the greatest appeal. Some of the individual 
selections were significant. For example, Mr. Tark- 
ington picked as his first choice The Ransom of 
Red Chief ,t a tale to be found in no other list. Per- 
haps that was only the expression of the mood of a 
moment, the liking of a man who during the previous 
two or three years had invented Hedrick Madison 
and Penrod Schofield for a delightfully diabolical 
boy. 

Ill 

THE "EAST side" OF O. HENRY 

In his nightly wanderings through his City of 
Bagdad, the good Haroun-al-Raschid in his golden 
prime did not confine himself to those thoroughfares 
that were analogous to London's Park Lane, Paris's Av- 
enue Bois de Boulogne, or New York's Riverside Drive. 
On the contrary, he preferred to seek out the purlieus, 
and to listen wisely in the humble shop of '*Fitbad the 
Tailor." Likewise the Haroun-al-Raschid of the 
modern Bagdad-on-the-Subway. The Editor-man, 
or more likely two or three of him, would be waiting 
for the promised (and in many cases already paid for) 
story, so Sydney Porter would say good-bye to the 
companions with whom he was sitting in a Broadway 
restaurant, proceed downtown, and stroll along the 

• See "Sixes and Sevens." 
t See "VHiirligigs." 

246 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

Bowery or adjacent streets until he fell in with the 
particular tramp who seemed most promising as copy. 
Sometimes he found the story and sometimes he did 
not. Often, when the idea came, it had absolutely 
nothing to do with the Bowery, or with tramps, or 
with two-cent coffee, or with anything remotely 
related thereto. But to Sydney Porter that was no 
reason for withholding the credit he considered due 
to the tramp. "He did not give me the idea," he 
once said in explanation, "but he did not drive it out 
of my head — ^which is just as important." 

Whether the particular tramp of an evening's 
ramble meant the inked pages of a tale of Texas, or 
Central America, or New Orleans, O. Henry's wan- 
derings about the East Side are reflected in some 
twenty or thirty stories with very definite back- 
grounds. The care with which Porter sought his 
local colour is indicated in The Sleuths,* in which 
a man from the Middle West goes to New York to 
find his sister. At her address he learns that she 
has moved away a month before, leaving no clue, and 
to help in the search he enlists the services of the 
famous detectives MuUins & Shamrock Jolnes. 
The science of deduction leads to No. 12 Avenue C, 
which is described as an "old-fashioned brownstone 
house in a prosperous and respectable neighbour- 
hood." Now, if any neighbourhood in New York 
City is not prosperous and respectable, it is that 
about Avenue C and Second Street. The Mulberry 

• See "Sixes and Sevens." 

247 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

Bend of other years was hardly more unsightly and 
unkempt. O. Henry had sensed its ofiFensiveness 
through his eyes and his nostrils. The selection of 
the No. 12 was not mere chance. He knew that there 
was no such number: that on the southeast corner 
was a saloon bearing the number 10, and on the north- 
east corner the pharmacy was designated as No. 14. 
Just as there is no No. 13 Washington Square, there 
is no No. 12 Avenue C. Also there is no No. 162 
Chilton Street, where the missing sister was event- 
ually found, for the reason that in the Borough of 
Manhattan there is no Chilton Street at all. 

Somewhere on the East Side is the famous Cafe 
Maginnis, where Ikey Snigglefritz, in the proudest, 
maddest moment of his life shook the hand of the 
great Billy McMahon. An indication as to the 
Cafe Maginnis's exact whereabouts is given in the 
information that Ikey, leaving it, "went down Hester 
Street, and up Chrystie and down Delancey to where 
he lived. Ikey's home was in a crazy brick structure, 
*'foul and awry," and there Cortlandt Van Duy- 
kinck found him and shook his hand, thereby com- 
pleting the social triangle. There somewhere was 
the saloon of Dutch Mike where the Mulberry Hill 
gang and the Dry Dock gang met in the Homeric 
conflict the outcome of which sent Cork McManus 
to strange lands west of the Bowery and the adven- 
tures narrated in Past One at Rooney's. * There 
may be found the Second Avenue boarding-house 

*^ee "Strictly Biuiness." 

248 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

where Miss Conway showed Andy Donovan the 
locket containing the portrait of her purely imaginary 
lover (The Count and the Wedding Guest) *. 
Between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the 
distance between the two streets is the shortest, was 
the Blue Light Drug Store, where Ikey Schoensteinf 
concocted the love philtre that was to work the down- 
fall of his rival. Chunk Macgowan. In Orchard 
Street were the rooms of the Give and Take Athletic 
Association where, as told in The Coming Out 
of Maggie, % Tony SpineUi played Prince Charming 
at the ball of the Clover Leaf Social Club under the 
pseudonym of Terry O'Sullivan; and farther up on 
the East Side, over against the elevated portion of 
the railroad, were the Beersheba Flats, from which 
the variegated tenants were driven forth by official 
edict to the grass of the park, and The City of 
Dreadful Night. $ 

IV 



cc 



HE SAW NO LONGER A RABBLE, BUT HIS BROTHERS 
SEEKING THE IDEAl" 

To look at the matter in its chronological as- 
pect, the first appearance of New York in the ro- 
mance of O. Henry was probably in the last part of 
"Cabbages and Kings." There is a picture of two 
men sitting on a stringer of a North River pier while 

• See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
t See "The Four Million." 
X See "The Voice of the City." 

M9 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

a steamer from the tropics is unloading bananas 
and oranges. One of the men is O'Day, formerly of 
the Columbia Detective Agency. In a moment of 
confidence he tells his companion of the mistake which 
has brought him to his unenviable condition, and in- 
cidentally clears up for the reader the rather ugly 
mystery that throughout the book obscured the 
marriage of Frank Goodwin and the lady known in 
Coralio as Isabel Guilbert. To begin in another way, 
that is at the gateway of the city and of the new 
world, in the story The Lady Higher Up,* O. 
Henry pictures a dialogue between ^Irs. Liberty, on 
her pedestal in the bay, and Miss Diana at the top 
of the tower of Madison Square Garden. Even the 
thick brogue which Mrs. Liberty has acquired cannot 
hide her env\^ of the other ladv. In the matron's 
opinion Miss Diana has the best job for a statue in 
the whole town, with the Cat Show, and the Horse 
Show, and the military tournaments where the pri- 
vates "look grand as generals, and the generals try 
to look grand as floorwalkers," and the Sportsman's 
Show, and above all, the French Ball "where the 
original Cohens and the Robert Emmet-Sangerbund 
Society dance the Highland Fling one with an- 
other." 

But even before his first glimpse at Mrs. Liberty 
the visitor from a foreign shore has a sight of O. 
Henry's New York, as, from the deck of the transat- 
lantic liner, the great wheels and towers of Coney 

• See "Sixes and Sevena." 

250 



ABOUT NEW YORK TMTH O. HENRY 

Island are pointed out to him. Among these wheels 
and towers Alexander Blinker, the owner of Brick 
Dust Row,* walked with Florence, his chance ac- 
quaintance of the boat, learned a lesson, and saw a 
light. No more was the jostling crowd a mass of 
vulgarians seeking gross joys. Counterfeit and false 
though the garish pleasures of the spangled temples 
were,' he perceived that deep under the gilt surface 
they offered saving and apposite balm and satisfac- 
tion to the restless human heart. Here, at least, 
was the husk of Romance, the empty but shining 
casque of Chivalry, the breath-catching though safe- 
guarded dip and flight of Adventure. He saw no 
longer a rabble, but his brothers seeking the ideal. 
Again here, in the enchanted chicken coop of Madame 
Zozo, there was reading of Tobin's Palm,f and 
prophecies of a dark man and a light woman, of 
trouble and financial loss, of a voyage by water, and 
of a meeting with a man with a crooked nose. In 
The Greater Coney J Dennis Carnahan expatiated 
ironically on the new city which has risen, Phoenix- 
like, out of the ashes of the old, and the wiping-out 
process, which, to his way of thinking, consisted of 
raising the price of admission from ten to twenty- 
five cents, and having a blonde named Maudie to 
take tickets instead of Micky, the Bowery Bite. The 
Babylonian towers and the Hindoo roof gardens blaz- 



• See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
t See "The Four Million." 
X See "Sixes and Sevens." 

£51 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

ing with lights, the camels moving with undulating 
walk, and the tawdry gondolas of artificial Venetian 
streets. These were what Mazie knew — Mazie of 
A Lickpenny Lover.* These things her little soul 
of a shop-girl saw when the millionaire painter- 
traveller Irving Carter, whose heart she had so 
strangely won, proposed to her and drew his elo- 
quent picture of a honeymoon in lands beyond the 
seas. These and no more. The next day her chum 
in the store asks about her "swell friend." "Him," 
is the retort. "Oh, he's a cheap skate. He ain't in 
it no more. TVTiat do you suppose that guy wanted 
me to do? He wanted me to marry him and go to 
Coney Island for a wedding trip." 

A Lickpenny Lover is just one of the stories in 
which the specified location is not merely a scene of 
the tale, but partly an explanation of it. For ex- 
ample, the next time that the reader of these notes 
happens to be at that point of New York City where 
Sixth Avenue, Broadway, and Thirty-fourth Street 
meet, let him recall Mammon and the Archer.f 
In that story O. Henry is at his O. Henriest. Listen. 
The last opportunity that the hero of the story, Rich- 
ard Rockwell, was to have to see Miss Lantry before 
her departure the next day for a two years' absence 
in Europe, was to be in the hansom cab in which he 
was to take her from the Grand Central Station to a 
box party at Wallack's Theatre. His father, the old 



• See "The Voice of the City." 
t See "The Four Million." 

252 



ABOUT NEW YORK TMTH 0. HENRY 

soap manufacturer, cheered him with expression of 
rough optimism and offered to back him with his 
money. His aunt gave him as an amulet his moth- 
er's wedding ring in wishing him God-speed and suc- 
cess. Robert took the ring and started out on 
knightly quest. As the cab approached the crossing 
indicated the ring dropped tinkling to the pavement. 
In the few minutes' resulting delay the traffic as- 
sumed a tangled condition which held hero and hero- 
ine prisoners for hours, and late that night the boy's 
aunt went to the father with the news that the 
young people were engaged, and a warning that he 
should never boast of the power of money again, as 
the Uttle gold band, an emblem of love and loyalty, 
had done what mere wealth could not accomplish. 
The story should have ended there, but with the 
characteristic touch, O. Henry introduced into the 
soap manufacturer's office the next morning a man 
who wore a red necktie and who answered to the name 
of Kelly. ''Well," says the millionaire, "it was a 
pretty good bilin' of soap and how much do I owe 
you?" To which Kelly makes the reply that he has 
had five thousand dollars on account, that he had got 
the express wagons and cabs mostly for five dollars, 
but that the truckmen and motormen cost him ten 
dollars apiece, and the policemen twenty-five and 
fifty, ''but," he adds enthusiastically, "when I got 
through I had a stage setting that would have made 
David Belasco envious. ^Miy, a snake couldn't 
have got across Thirty-fourth Street." 

£53 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 



SQUAEES AND AVENUES 

It is not likely that the Fourth Avenue of to-day 
would have had much to appeal to O. Henry's imag- 
ination. As it was half a dozen years ago it was one 
of his favourite thoroughfares, and reached its apothe- 
osis in A »Bird of Bagdad.* There 0. Henry pic- 
tured it as a street that the city seemed to have for- 
gotten in its growth, a street, born and bred in the 
Bowery, staggering northward full of good resolu- 
tions. At Fourteenth Street "it struts for a brief 
moment proudly in the glare of the museums and 
cheap theatres. It may yet become a fit mate for 
its highborn sister boulevard to the west, or its roar- 
ing, polyglot, broad-waisted cousin to the east." 
Then it passes what O. Henry in The Gold That 
Glittered, t called "the square presided over by 
George the Veracious,'' and comes to the silent and 
terrible mountains, buildings square as forts, high as 
the clouds, shutting out the sky, where thousands 
of slaves bend over desks all day. Next it glides 
into a mediaeval solitude. On each side are the shops 
devoted to antiques. " Men in rusting armour stand 
in the windows and menace the hurrying cars with 
raised, rusty iron bumpers, hauberks, and helms, 
blunderbuses, Cromwellian breastplates, matchlocks, 
creeses, and the swords and daggers of an army of 

• See "Strictly Business." 
t See "Strictly Business." 

254 



ABOUT NEW YORK ^^TH O. HENRY 

dead and gone gallants gleam dully in the ghostly 
light." This mediaeval solitude forbodes an early 
demise. What street could live inclosed by these 
mortuary relics and trod by these spectral citizens? 
"Not Fourth Avenue. Not after the tinsel but en- 
livening glory of the Little Rialto — not after the echo- 
ing drum beats of Union Square. There need be no 
tears, ladies and gentlemen. 'Tis but the suicide of a 
street. With a shriek and a crash Fourth Avenue 
dives headlong into the tunnel at Thirty-fourth 
Street and is never seen again." 

Three of the city squares, Madison Square, Union 
Square, and Gramercy Park play conspicuous parts 
in O. Henry's stories. His tales are full of human 
derelicts and where is there a more natural back- 
ground for such than the public benches of these 
parks .f^ He shows you the Bed Liners stamping their 
freezing feet, and the preacher standing on a pine 
box exhorting his transient and shifting audience. 
In this Bed Line were Walter Smuythe and the dis- 
charged coachman, Thomas McQuade, the night 
that the red motor car, humming up Fifth Avenue, 
lost its extra tire as narrated in The Fifth TMieel.* 
It was on a bench of the Square that the millionaire 
Pilkins found the penniless young eloping couple, 
Marcus Clayton of Roanoke County, Virginia, and 
Eva Bedford of Bedford County, of the same State. 
It was perhaps on the same bench that Soapy sat 
meditating just what violation of the law would in- 

* See "Strictly Business." 

^55 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

sure his deportation to the hospitable purheus of Black- 
well's Island, which was his Palm Beach and Riviera 
for the winter months. It was near by at least that 
Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valle Luna, 
known otherwise as Dopey Mike, looked up at the 
clock in the Metropolitan Tower and gave sage ad- 
vice and consolation to the young man who was wait- 
ing to learn his fate as told in The Caliph, Cupid and 
the Clock.* "\Miile the auto with the white body and 
the red running gear was waiting near the corner of 
Twenty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, Parken- 
stacker made the acquaintance of the girl in gray and 
listened to the strange story born in the pages of 
Robert Louis Stevenson's "New Arabian Nights." 
Over on the sidewalk just in front of the Flatiron 
Building Sam Folwell and Cal Harkness, the Cumber- 
land feudists, shook hands Squaring the Circle. f 

In following the trail of O. Henry's men and women 
through Madison Square you have the choice of 
many benches. This is not the case when Lnion 
Square is introduced in the story of Two Thanks- 
giving Day Gentlemen. J The writer tells you that 
when Stuffy Pete went to the Square to await the 
coming of the tall thin old gentleman dressed in 
black and wearing the old-fashioned kind of glasses 
that won't stay on the nose — the old gentleman who 
had been StufiFy's host every Thanksgiving Day for 



• See "The Four Million." 

t See "The Voice of the City." 

X See ' 'The Trinuned Lamp." 

^56 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

nine years — he "took his seat on the third bench to 
the right as you enter Union Square from the east, 
at the walk opposite the fountain." Across Union 
Square Hastings Beauchamp Moreley sauntered with 
a pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the 
park benches in The Assessor of Success.* One 
evening in the Square Murray and the dismissed po- 
lice captain Marony were sitting side by side trying 
to think of schemes to repair their fallen fortunes. 
When opportunity came both acted According to 
Their Light s.f The captain was reduced to the point 
where, to use his own words, he would ''marry the 
Empress of China for one bowl of chop suey, commit 
murder for a plate of beef stew, steal a wafer from a 
waif, or be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder." But 
his code of honour he still retained. He would not 
''squeal." It is to the other extreme of society that 
O. Henry takes us when he deals with Gramercy 
Park. All about that private square with Its locked 
gates are the severe mansions of his aristocrats. 
There dwelt Alicia Van Der Pool before she married 
Robert Walmesley In The Defeat of the City. J 
A house facing the west side of the park was unques- 
tionably the home of the Von der Ruy slings. That 
illustrious family had dwelt there for many years. 
In fact, in a spirit of obvious awe,.0. Henry Imparted 
the Information that the Von der Ruysllngs had re- 



• See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
t See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
X See "The Voice of the City." 

257 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

ceived the first key ever made to Gramercy Park. 
In The Marry Month of May* we learn that near 
the Park old Mr. Coulson had a house, the gout, 
half a million dollars, a daughter, and a housekeeper. 
It was the daughter who thought to chill her father's 
springtime ardour by the introduction of a thousand 
pounds of ice into the basement. It was the house- 
keeper that thwarted the scheme with the result 
that the old millionaire uttered his deferred proposal 
while Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson ran away 
with the iceman. 

VI 

GREENWICH VILLAGE 

Of all men Sydney Porter was one of the most 
difficult of approach. To his last day he was shy and 
almost suspicious of the stranger who was not the 
casual stranger, that is, the acquaintance scraped in 
a mood on a bench in Madison Square, or Sheridan 
Park, or at some corner of "that thoroughfare which 
parallels and parodies Broadway." There was a 
little circle of his intimates consisting of such men as 
Richard Duffy, Oilman Hall, Robert H. Davis, H. 
Peyton Steger, Robert Rudd Wliiting and a few 
more, to whom he was accessible at any hour of the 
night or day. But these men knew that it was out 
of the question to arrange formally a meeting be- 
tween 0. Henry and some one who wanted to know 

• See "Whirligigs." 

258 



ABOUT NEW YORK WITH O. HENRY 

him; knew that at the first hint the quarry would 
take fright and disappear. So the encounter had to 
have every appearance of mere chance. Into Por- 
ter's rooms on Irving Place or in the Caledonia, where 
he lived later, the friend would drop, apparently for 
a word or two of business. With him there would 
be a stranger, whom the friend had chanced to pick 
up on the way. Nine times out of ten the friend 
would not introduce the other two. But after a few 
minutes' talk and in response to a prearranged signal, 
the stranger would remark that he had stumbled on a 
joint near the Bowery, or on upper Broadway, where 
there was a cocktail mixer who had tended bar in 
forty-seven cities of the United States. Before the 
words were out of his mouth Porter had reached for 
his hat. The friend was forgotten, and arm in arm 
story-spinner and stranger sallied forth into the 
night. 

The bait thrown out was not always a cocktail 
mixer and his experiences. "The most picturesque 
bit of rear tenement that remains in New York." 
''That was the hint that I used when the nod came," 
one man who had found O. Henry in the manner 
suggested told the writer, "and in three minutes 
we were in the street. I led him down Irving Place 
to Fourteenth, to Sixth Avenue, past the Jefferson 
Market Police Court, into Greenwich Village, past 
Sheridan Park, and down Grove Street to the very 
end. There, between the front houses, Nos. 10 and 
12, there is an opening. Beyond the opening is a 

259 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

triangle, in the middle of which is a tall telegraph 
pole, and at the back there are three old brick houses, 
the front windows of which look out diagonally at a 
wall against which leaves are growing. 'There is a 
story there,' said Porter, 'a story that suggests an 
episode in Murger's Vie de BoJiemey where the grisette 
at night waters the flowers to keep them alive. The 
lifetime of the flowers, you remember, was to be the 
lifetime of that transient love.' He wrote that story, 
I am sure, in The Last Leaf,* and when I see that 
bare, dreary yard, and the blank wall of the house 
twenty feet away, and the old ivy vine, I recall the 
pathetic tale of Sue and Joanna and the masterpiece 
that old Behrman painted at the cost of his life." 

This Greenwich Village section of the city always 
appealed strongly to O. Henry's imagination. He 
liked to picture the odd zigzagging of the streets and 
to people them with the artists of his creation. Some- 
where down in Greenwich Village was the "Vallam- 
brosa" where the seK-reliant Hetty lived and fur- 
nished the beef for the making of the Irish stew as re- 
lated in The Third Ingredient. f There, too — in 
the red brick district, was The Furnished Room,| 
with its suggestion of mignonette. A few blocks 
away to the south and west is Abingdon Square. In 
The Thing's the Play,§ we are told "there stands a 
house near Abingdon Square. On the groimd floor 

• See "The Trimmed Lamp." 
t See "Options." 
JSee "The Four MUlion." 
S See "Strictly Btisinesa." 

260 



ABOUT NEW YORK VaTB. O. HENRY 

there has been for twenty-five years a little store 
where toys and notions and stationery are sold." 
There IVlrs. Frank Barry, deserted on her wedding 
night on account of a strange misunderstanding, 
lived out her life awaiting the return of her husband. 

Fifth Avenue or First, Riverside Drive or Division 
Street, Broadway or the Bower^^, Corlears Hook Park 
or Gramercy; no matter what the locality or the social 
scale of its denizens, it is always Bagdad. And with 
the night comes the glamour that belongs not to 
Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, 
bazaars, and walled houses of the Occidental city of 
romance are filled with the same kind of people that 
interested Haroim-al-Raschid in his golden prime. 
Clothes may be different, but underneath men and 
women are unchanged. With the eye of faith the 
traveller can see the Little Hunchback, Sinbad the 
Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor, the Beautiful Persian, the 
one-eyed Calenders, the Barber and his Six Brothers, 
and Ali Baba and Forty Robbers on every block. 

Many have been the men and the women who have 
invaded New York as a literary field. But so far 
there has been but one conqueror of Alexander-like 
ambitions. And as became a conqueror, he was 
constantly rechristening the city to suit his own whim- 
sical humour. At one moment it was his *' Little 
Old Bagdad-on-the-Subway," at another, the ''City 
of Too Many Caliphs"; at another, ' 'Noisy ville-on- 
the-Hudson"; or "The Big Town of Razzle-Dazzle"; 
or, ''WoKviUe-on-the-Subway"; or, "The City of 

261 



TV AIFS AND STRAYS 

Chameleon Changes." Yet Porter discovered New 
York comparatively late in life ; lived in it but the few 
brief last years. The story has often been told of 
how, a few minutes before the end came, he whis- 
pered to those about him: "Pull up the shades. I 
don't want to go home in the dark." I like to be- 
lieve that he did not want to go home without one 
last glimpse of the town that he had learned to love 
so well; one last glimpse of his "Little Old Bagdad- 
on-the-Subway " ; his "City of Too Many Caliphs.'* 



262 



O. HENRY AND NEW ORLEANS 

By Caroline Francis Richardson 

A SETTING that appealed strongly both to O. 

jTjL Henry's story-instinct and to his sympathy, 
jL jI^ was downtown New Orleans. Like many 
other writers he found inspiration in the narrow, 
dingy, shadowy Quarter whose buildings and street 
names and traditions tell of many things that to-day 
are lost: riches and lives and causes. But O. Henry 
used his "copy" differently from other story-tellers 
who have found suggestion in New Orleans. In the 
O. Henry tales no plot hinges on a mixture of blood; 
no hero or heroine is enguKed by flood or devoured by 
plague; no person speaks an unintelligible dialect. 
There is no use of Mardi Gras, All Saints' Day, or 
quartorze juillet. And this handling of material is 
quite characteristic of the author. In all his stories, 
wherever placed, he makes use of every detail that 
will add reality to a character or an occurrence. 
But he does not introduce localities and localisms 
merely for their intrinsic interest. 

As a setting New Orleans can claim but a scant 
share in the lives of some of O. Henry's knights of 
high adventure. This is the case with a certain 
grafter and his partner, Caligula, who of their stay 

263 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

could remember only some drinks "invented by the 
Creoles during the period of Louey Cans, in which 
they are still served at the side doors"; and an at- 
tempt "to make the French Quarter pay up the back 
trading stamps due on the Louisiana Purchase." 
It is in that story, Hostages to Momus,* that the 
Grafter explains the component parts of a perfect 
breakfast: "There'll never be a perfect breakfast 
eaten until some man grows arms long enough to 
stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over 
to Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont 
and digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, and 
then turns over a beehive close to a clover patch out 
in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close 
to making a meal that the gods eat on Mount Olym- 
pus." 

Many of these birds of passage merely arrive and 
depart by way of fruit steamers coming from or going 
to an explosion in Central America. In that case, 
the city sees them only while they pick their way 
over a banana-strewn wharf, dodging the long line 
of men who pass the green bunches in a swaying 
chain from the hold of the ship to the freight cars 
near by. It was by pretending to be a part of such 
a line that the too sjTnpathetic, too easily won Clancy 
and the escaping revolutionist, General de Vega, landed 
undetected from the ship in which they had travelled 
as stowaways (The Shamrock and the Palmj). 



• See "The Gentle Grafter." 
t Sec "Cabbages and Kings." 

264 



O. HENRY AND NEW ORLEANS 

In Lafayette Square Clancy consummated his dark 
scheme. With the connivance of a pohceman, 
a fellow Irishman, the General was arrested as a 
vagrant and sentenced to sixty days' hard labour. 
The General, be it remembered, had lured Clancy to 
Guatemala as a revolutionist, but had forced him to 
assist for sixty days in building a railroad. And 
now — "Havin' no money, they set him (The Gen- 
eral) to work his fine out with a gang from the parish 
prison clearing Ursulines Street. Around the corner 
was a saloon decorated genially with electric fans 
and cool merchandise. I made that me head- 
quarters, and every fifteen minutes I'd walk around 
and take a look at the little man fiUibustering with a 
rake and shovel. . . . Carrambos! Erin go 
bragh!" 

In Phoebe* a less triumphant Irishman is 
shown us: "Bad-luck Kearney." His untoward 
adventures reach us through Captain Patricio Ma- 
lone, "a Hiberno-Iberian Creole," who tells the story 
while sitting over cognac in a "little red-tiled cafe 
near Congo Square." From his first sight of Kear- 
ney falling into a cellar on Tchoupitoulas Street, the 
Captain should have taken warning. But though 
Kearney conscientiously declares his handicap, even 
leading his new friend out into the middle of the great 
width of Canal Street in order to point out the sinister 
Saturn and the evil satellite, Phoebe, under which he, 
Kearney, was born, Captain Malone refuses to yield 

• See "Roads of Destiny." 

265 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

to superstition. Later, however, circumstances oblige 
him to admit the power of the stars, and for the good 
of the cause, they part. The Captain's conversion 
is confirmed by his meeting with Kearney a year 
afterward. On this final occasion Captain Malone, 
walking near Poydras Market, is brushed aside by 
"an immensely stout, pink-faced lady in black 
satin." . . . "Behind her trailed a little man 
laden to the gunwale with bundles and bags of goods 
and vegetables." x\nd the little man calls concili- 
atingly, "I'm coming, Phoebe!" 

Very rarely do historic buildings slip into these 
stories, so it is only as a measure of distance that the 
old Bourbon Street opera house is used. In A 
Matter of Mean Elevation,* the reader learns that 
"The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusi- 
astic lovers of music between the equator and the 
French Opera House in New Orleans." In Blind 
Man's Holiday,! too, there are buildings we might see 
on a post card: "the Rue Chartres perishes in the 
old Place d'Armes. The ancient Cabildo, where 
Spanish justice fell like hail, faces it, and the Cathe- 
dral, another provincial ghost, overlooks it. Its 
centre is a little iron-railed park. . . . Pedes- 
talled high above it, the general sits his cavorting 
steed." 

In the same story O. Henry makes another de- 
parture and yields to the sentiment of French Town: 



• See "Wliirligigs." 
t See "Wliirligigs." 

266 



O. HENRY AND NEW ORLEANS 

"The Rue Chartres, in New Orleans, Is a street of 
ghosts. It lies in the quarter where the Frenchman 
in his prime set up translated pride and glory; where, 
also, the arrogant don had swaggered, and dreamed 
of gold grants and ladies' gloves. Every flagstone 
has its grooves worn by footsteps going royally to 
the wooing and the fighting. Every house has a 
princely heartbreak; each doorway its untold tale of 
gallant promise and slow decay. By night the Rue 
Chartres is now but a murky fissure, from which the 
groping wayfarer sees, flung up against the sky, the 
tangled filigree of Moorish balconies. The old houses 
of monsieur stand yet, indomitable against the cen- 
tury, but their essence is gone. The street is one of 
ghosts to whosoever can see them." And in this story 
is O. Henry's one use of a New Orleans festival: it is 
on Carnival costumes that Norah Greenway works 
every and all night — Norah Greenway, the girl who 
fabricates a past so that her lover, a self-confessed 
sinner, may have the courage to ask her to marry 
him. 

O. Henry's philosophers of Fortune usually shun 
hotels. An emphasized instance is that of William 
Trotter (Helping the Other Fellow*) who comes to 
New Orleans after a long stay in Aguas Frescas. 
His brother has offered him a position at a salary of 
five thousand a year, and expects to meet him at the 
St. Charles Hotel where they will discuss details. 
"When I arrived at the Crescent City, I hurried 

•See -Rolling Stones." 

267 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

away — far away from St. Charles to a dim chambre 
garnie in Bienville Street. And there, looking down 
from my attic window from time to time at the old 
absinthe house across the street, I wrote this story 
to buy my bread and butter." 

And it was in ''one of those rare old hostelries in 
Royal Street" that Monsieur Morin lodged — the 
Monsieur Morin who is so important though unseen a 
figure in '* Cherchez la Femme."* The search for the 
lady is the self -assumed responsibility of two report- 
ers: Robbins, of the Picayune, and Dumars, of 
L'Abeille, "the old French newspaper that has 
buzzed for nearly a century." In a cafe in Dumaine 
Street they argue and conjecture as to M. Morin 's 
disposition of Madame Thibault's twenty thousand 
dollars, of which he had had the care. The money 
is finally found in the shape of government bonds 
carefully pasted by Madame Thibault herself over 
the unsightly cracks in the wall of one of her rear 
rooms. 

Another native protagonist, in The Renaissance 
of Charleroijf is Grandemont Charles, "a little Creole 
gentleman, aged thirty -four, with a bald spot on the 
top of his head and the manners of a prince. By day 
he was a clerk in a cotton broker's office in one of 
those cold, rancid mountains of oozy brick, down 
near the levee. By night, in the old French Quarter, 
he was again the last male descendant of the Charles 



• See "Roads of Destiny." 
t See "Roads of Destiny." 

268 



O. HENRY AND NEW ORLEANS 

family." And in this last character he determines 
to spend his painfully saved hoard of six hundred dol- 
lars in a renaissance of past glories. He secures the 
use of the old plantation house, Charleroi; he fills 
it with appropriate furniture, rented from the an- 
tique shops in Royal and Chartres streets; he orders 
wines and food from famous places — and for an eve- 
ning, Charleroi lives again. That no one of his in- 
vited guests appears, that an uninvited guest does 
appear, whose presence means more to Grandemont 
than even the glorious past — all this makes it an O. 
Henry story. 

A plantation below the city is the setting for a 
climax in Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking.* 
By means of a freight-car Dick arrives in the "big, 
almsgiving, long-suffering city of the South, the cold 
weather paradise of tramps." After a cautious sur- 
vey that includes the levee "pimpled with dark 
bulks of merchandise," the long line of Algiers across 
the river/ the tugs, the ferries, and the Italian luggers, 
Dick climbs warily down and starts, whistling, toward 
Lafayette Square to meet a pal. But a friendly po- 
liceman warns Dick of a new and inhospitable city 
ordinance, and he departs hastily for the open road. 
A stall keeper in the French Market gives him break- 
fast, and he is almost happy until Chalmette, with its 
"vast and bewildering industry," frightens him and 
drives him along a country road hemmed in on one 
side by the high green levee and on the other by a 

• See "The Roads of Destiny." 

269 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

mysterious, frog-haunted, mosquito-infested marsh. 
The incident of a tramp saving a family from burg- 
lary and fire, because of a kindly word from a young 
girl, is not new; and the plantation house and house- 
hold are typical and trite. But WTiistling Dick is 
real. It is entirely logical that after his glorious 
evening as honoured guest, and his comfortable night 
on the floor of his well-furnished room, he should, 
on looking out of the window at the dawn of Christ- 
mas Day, feel a distinct shock. He sees and hears 
the evidences of the labour that a monster sugar crop 
has forced upon a part even of the world holiday. 
"Here was a poem; an epic — nay, a tragedy — with 
work, the curse of the world, for its theme." A few 
moments later TMiistling Dick, carefree and happy, 
strolls along the top of the levee, away from his grate- 
ful hosts, away into the new day and the untram- 
melled life. 



270 



"A YANKEE MAUPASSANT" 

A Summary of the Criticism of Ten Years Ago 

EVERY reader of current American newspapers 
and magazines is familiar with the name 
"O. Henry." It is a pen name, conceaHng 
the identity of Mr. Sydney Porter, the author of 
sundry books of short stories. For some time now 
his reputation has been steadily growing. Through- 
out the country are people of all sorts and conditions 
who agree enthusiastically on one point — ^that no 
one else can write short stories like O. Henry's. 
The critics were at first slow to accept his work. 
The suggestion that he was " a Yankee Maupassant,"* 
came from his publishers, and did not, for a while, 
impress the writing fraternity. But now the tables 
are completely turned. We find William Marion 
Reedy, of the St. Louis Mirror^ affirming that, to 
his thinking, Mr. Porter deserves the very flattering 
designation conferred upon him; and Henry James 
Forman, of the editorial staff of the North American 
Review y declares: "He writes with the skill of a Mau- 
passant, and a humour Maupassant never dreamed 
of." The Bookman says, editorially: 



* This appellation is an unconscious tribute to the broad Americanism of a man who lived most 
of his Ufe in North Carolina and Texas. 

271 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

"While we are inclined to be conservative in the 
matter of estimating a contemporary writer, and find 
exceedingly exasperating these impulsive and extrava- 
gant recognitions of 'new Stevensons' and 'new 
Kiplings,' and 'new De Maupassants' and 'American 
Dickenses/ the time is past for any restraint in the 
frank appreciation of the work of the author who 
signs himseK '0. Henry.' The man is in many re- 
spects an extraordinary workman and a consummate 
artist." 

The distinguishing characteristics of 0. Henry's 
work are his journalistic style and his democratic 
instinct. The two combine, as Francis Hackett, the 
literary editor of the Chicago Evening Post points out, 
in what is distinctly "an original revelation of life." 
Mr. Hackett says: 

"O. Henry writes with a glitter that is characteris- 
tic half of the New York Sun, half of the Smart Set, 
. . . His scope is restricted. His manner is not 
discursive. He gets sensational contrasts and asser- 
tive colouring into each short story. Allowing for 
this, he gives us a humorous yet profound under- 
standing of a phase that has not yet been treated 
before in American art, gives us intimacy with an 
order of metropolitan characters and circumstances 
not likely to be better focussed or illumined in our 
generation. 

"O. Henry accepts, with a mixture of irony, wit, and 
sympathy, the distressing fact that a human being 
can be a clerk, the remarkable fact that a clerk can 

272 



« 



A YANKEE MAUPASSANT" 



be a human being. He knows the clerk, knows him 
in his works and pomps. But there is a peculiarity 
in O. Henry's attitude toward the clerk. . . . 
Most literary men are intrenched in culture, obfus- 
cated by it. They take the uncultured morosely or 
pityingly or mordantly. They discuss those who are 
not 'elite' as a physician would discuss a case — 
scientifically, often humanly, interested, but always 
with a strong sense of the case's defects and deficien- 
cies. 

"To O. Henry, on the contrary, the clerk is neither 
abnormal nor subnormal. He writes of him without 
patronizing him. He realizes the essential and stu- 
pendous truth that to himself the clerk is not pitiable. 
He takes into account, in other words, the adjust- 
ments that every man makes to constitute himself 
the apex of this sphere — ^for, after all, there are 
800,000,000 apices on this sphere, if we dare to assume 
that fowl and fishes are not also self-conscious and 
self-centred. 

'^When one says *^ clerk' one means $15-a-week 
humanity. O. Henry has specialized in this human- 
ity with loving care, with a Kiplingesque attention to 
detail. But his is far from the humourless method of 
Gissing and Merrick, who were no more happy in 
a boarding-house than Thoreau would have been in 
the Waldorf-Astoria. O. Henry never forgets the 
inherent, the unconscious humour in the paradoxes 
and contrasts of mixed civilization, the crudities of 
which serve only to exasperate the misplaced and 

273 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

morbid. He is no moral paradoxist, like Shaw, no 
soured idealist, like Zola, no disgruntled esthete, 
like Gissing. It is the comedy of the paradoxes 
and contrasts that he searches and displays — a com- 
edy in which he miraculously keeps the balance, often 
by the adventitious aid of irony and satire, not 
sacrificing the clerk to the man of culture, nor, on the 
other hand, losing perspective in magnifying the 
clerk." 

But 0. Heniy- does not confine himself to the clerk. 
As Mr. Hackett tells us: 

"In one sense Broadway is the spinal column of his 
art, and the nerve branches cover all Manhattan. 
He knows the side streets where Mamie boards. He 
knows Harlem. He knows the narrow-chested flat. 
He knows the Bowery, Irish and Yiddish. He knows 
the Tenderloin, cop, panhandler, man about town, 
sport, bartender, and waiter. He knows Shanley's 
and Childs's, the lemon-odoured buffet and the French 
table d'hote. He knows the sham Bohemia, the real 
Bohemia. And his stories are starred with little 
vignettes of the town, paragraphs of unostentatious 
art that let us see Madison Square, or the \Miite 
Way, or the Park (over and over again the Park), or 
the side street in springtime — all clear as the vision 
in the crystal. 

"O. Hemy-'s triumphs are often triumphs of fancy. 
He has the sense of the marvellous which belongs to 
tellers of the short storv" since the nights of Arabia. 
And O. Henry can discover in Manhattan the wonder 

274 



"A YANKEE MAUPASSANT" 

of fable and adventure, the eternal symbols of imagi- 
nation, the beauty of the jewel in the toad." 

To this should be added the tribute of William 
Marion Reedy: 

"As a depicter of the life of New York's four mil- 
lion — club men, fighters, thieves, policemen, touts, 
shop-girls, lady cashiers, hoboes, actors, stenog- 
raphers, and what not — 0. Henr^^ has no equal for 
keen insight into the beauties and meannesses of 
character or motive. Mordant though he be at 
times his heart is with innocence and right, but he 
sees the fun that underlies sophistication and selfish- 
ness. Not only does he see life, but he sees its prob- 
lems and in a certain shy-sly way suggests his solu- 
tions therefor. His gifts of description are of a sur- 
prising variety in method. His pictures, mostly 
small, intimate greater scopes and deeper vistas. 
Afraid of pathos, his very promptness to avoid it 
upon its slightest hint of imminence gives poignancy 
to the note he thus strikes as by suggestion. He loves 
the picaroon and the vagabond, and dowers them 
with vocabularies rich and strange and fanciful. 
. . . He always has a story. The style or the 
mood may lure you away from it momentarily, but 
the tale always asserts its primacy, and its end comes 
always in just the whimsical way you didn't expect. 
O. Henry is inexhaustible in quip, in imagery, in 
quick, sharp, spontaneous invention. In his ap- 
parent carelessness we suspect a carefulness, but this 
is just wherein he is sib to the French short-story 

275 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

writers, chief among them De Maupassant. Delia 
Cruscan critics may disapprove of him for his slang, 
but until you know his slang, you never know what a 
powerful vehicle slang can be in the hands of one who 
can mate it with the echoes from and essences of true 
literary expression. It is not the slang of George 
Ade, or Henry M. Blossom, or George V. Hobart. 
Henry's slang has some of the savour that we find in 
the archaic vocabulary invented for himself by Chat- 
terton. Its content transcends the capacity of the 
mere argot of the street. In the American short 
story to-day O. Henry has demonstrated himself a 
delightful master, one absolutely unapproachable in 
swift visualization and penetrative interpretation 
of life, as any and all of the books now to his credit 
will show to any one capable of understanding." 



S76 



O. HENRY'S SHORT STORIES 
By Henry James Forman 

MR. SYDNEY PORTER, the gentleman who, 
in the language of some of his characters, is 
"denounced" by the euphonious pen name 
of O. Henry, has breathed new life into the short story. 
Gifted as he is with a flashing wit, abimdant humour, 
and quick observation, no subject has terrors for him. 
If it be too much to say, in the old phrase, that noth- 
ing human is alien to him, at least the larger part of 
humanity is his domain. The very title of one of 
his books, "The Four Million," is a protest against 
those who believe that New York contains only four 
hundred people worth while. O. Henry backs the 
census-taker against the social arbiter. The rich and 
the fashionable are, in his tales, conceived much in 
the spirit of similar characters in melodrama, except 
that the ingredient of humour is put in to mitigate 
them. Indeed, they figure but seldom. But the 
poor and the lowly, the homeless lodger of the city 
park, the vagabond of the "bread line," the waitress, 
the shop and factory girl, the ward politician, the city 
policeman, the whole "ruck and rabble" of life, so 
meaningless to the comfortable, unobservant bour- 
geois, are set forth always with keen knowledge, with 

277 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

a laughing humour, and not infrequently with a 
tender, smiling pathos. As this panorama of the 
imdenoted faces of the great city passes before the 
reader, he becomes his own Caliph Haroun-al-Ras- 
chid, and New York a teeming Bagdad, full of ro- 
mance and myster)\ 

The facility, the light touch of 0. Henry, his 
mastery of the vernacular, his insight into the life of 
the disinherited, make it needless for him to resort 
to such inventions as Stevenson's learned Arabian, 
imaginary- author of the "New Arabian Nights." 
The piquant and picturesciue phrasing, the dash of 
slang, the genial and winning fancy seem to carry oflF 
the most fantastic situations. The Touchstone, the 
jester, the merry-maker has always enjoyed a cer- 
tain license if he had but the wit not to abuse it. O. 
Henry's fun is never of the slapstick variety and his 
pathos never bathos. 

We are shaken with sad laughter at the many 
and divers attempts of the park-bench vagabond, 
Soapy,* to be arrested and sent to the workhouse for 
the winter months. He eats a meal and does not 
pay, he steals an umbrella, he accosts unescorted 
women, but all to no purpose. The police seem to 
regard hini "as a king who could do no wrong." 
But as he passes by a church the organ music of an 
anthem vividly recalls his boyhood, stirs the tramp 
to his depths, and he resolves to turn over a new leaf. 
He will seek work and be a man. Then the policeman 

• The Cop and the Anthem, in "The Four Million-'* 

278 



O. HENRY'S SHORT STORIES 

lays a hand upon him, hales him before a magistrate 
as a vagrant, and the city's swirling machinery of the 
law sends Soapy to *'the Island" after all. And 
the author smiles with tender compassion over this 
poor shuttlecock of fate. 

With no less humorous kindness does he deal with 
'Tildy, **the unwooed drudge," the plain little wait- 
ress in an Eighth Avenue chop-house.* All the hurry- 
ing clientele of that eating-house admired Aileen, who 
"was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious, and learned in 
persiflage." But no one had a word for 'Tildy of the 
freckles and the hay-coloured hair, until one day a 
tipsy laundry clerk put his arm round 'Tildy's waist 
and kissed her. For a brief space that transformed 
her life. 'Tildy the unnoticed began to bind ribbons 
in her hair, to prink and to preen after the fashion of 
daughters of Eve. ''A gentleman insulted me to- 
day," she modestly informed all her customers. "He 
put his arm around my waist and kissed me." And 
as the diners turned upon her the stream of badinage 
hitherto directed at Aileen alone, 'Tildy's heart 
swelled in her bosom, "for she saw at last the towers 
of Romance rise above the horizon of the gray plain 
in which she had for so long travelled." 'Tildy had a 
thrilling sensation of fear lest Seeders, the laundry 
clerk, in a mood of jealous love-madness, rush in and 
shoot her with a pistol. This she deplored, for no 
one had shot Aileen for love, and she did not wish to 
overshadow her friend. TMien Seeders does come in 



•The Brief Debut of Tildy, in "The Four Million.' 

279 



WAIFS AND STRAYS 

it is only to apologize, with the plea that he was tipsy. 
'Tildy's towers of romance crumble to earth. The 
glory fades suddenly, for it was not love at all that 
actuated Seeders. But Aileen the staunch-hearted 
comforts 'Tildy in her sorrow, for if Seeders "were 
any kind of a gentleman," she tells her, "he wouldn't 
of apologized." 

"The Trimmed Lamp" is of a piece with "The 
Four Million," filled with the tragi-comedy of life 
much as it appeared to Dickens and to Frangois 
Villon. In "Heart of the West" the author exploits 
a vein many have attempted in a short story as well 
as in the novel — the so-called "wild West." But no 
one, it is safe to say, has brought so much fun and 
humour to the Western story. Cattle-king, cowboy, 
miner, the plains and the chaparral — material of the 
"dime novel," but all treated with the skill of a 
Maupassant, and a humour Maupassant never 
dreamed of. The merest sketch of them has a cer- 
tain substance to it. Yet it is idle to compare O. 
Henry with anybody. No talent could be more 
original or more delightful. The combination of 
technical excellence with whimsical, sparkling wit, 
abundant humour, and a fertile invention is so rare 
that the reader is content without comparisons. 



280 



O. HENRY INDEX 



According to Their Lights. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Adjustment of Nature, An. See: Four Million, The. 

Admiral, The. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Adventures in Neurasthenia. Same as Let Me Feel 
Your Pulse. 

Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes, The. See: Sixes 
and Sevens. 

After the Battle. Same as The Crucible. 
After Twenty Years. See: Four Million, The. 
Afternoon Miracle, An. See: Heart of the West. 
Alias Jimmy Valentine. Dramatization of Retrieved 
Reformation, A. 

Apology, An. See: Rolling Stones. 
Aristocracy Versus Hash. See: Rolling Stones. 
Art and the Bronco. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Assessor of Success, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
At Arms with Morpheus. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Atavism of John Tom Little Bear, The. See: Rolling 

Stones. 
Atwood, Johnny. See: Note under Cabbages and Kings. 

B 

Babes in the Jungle. See: Strictly Business. 
Badge of Policeman O'Roon, The. See: Trimmed 
Lamp, The. 

£81 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Best-Seller. See: Options. 
Between Rounds. See: Four Million, The. 
Bexar Script, No. 2692. See: Rolling Stones. 
Bird of Bagdad, A. See: Strictly Business. 
Blackjack Bargainer, A. See: Whirligigs. 
Blind Man*s Holiday. See: Whirligigs. 
Brickdust Row. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
Brief Debut of 'Tildy, The. See: Four Million, The. 
Buried Treasure. See: Options. 

Buyer from Cactus City. The. See: Trimmed Lamp, 

The. 
By Courier. See: Four MilHon, The. 



Caballero's Way, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Cabbages and Kings. 

The stories in this volume, though apparently disconnected chap- 
ters, fall into four main groups, with the exception of one inde- 
p>endent tale. The Lotus and the Bottle. But the stories all 
have a loose inter-relation owing to the fact that Coralio in Central 
America is their common stage, and that the dramatis persons, 
generally speaking, is the same throughout. For the advantage 
of readers who wish to get the chapters of the various stories in 
their natural order, the groups are here marked alphabetically. 
For instance, all the chapters centring about Frank Goodwin are 
grouped with The Money Maze as A. Those about Johnny 
Atwood with Cupid's Exile Number Two as B. Those about 
Keogh and Clancy with The Phonograph and the Graft as C. 
Those about Dicky as D and those about The Admiral as E. 

contents: 

The Proem: By the Carpen- Smith, A 

ter, A Caught, A 

"Fox-in-the-Morning," A Cupid's Exile Number Two, 

The Lotus and the Bottle B 

282 



O. HENRY INDEX 

The Phonograph and the Shoes, B 

Graft, C Ships, B 

Money Maze, A Masters of Arts, C 

The Admiral, E Dicky, D 

The Flag Paramount, E Rouge et Noir, D 

The Shamrock and the Palm, C Two Recalls, A 

The Remnants of the Code, A - The Vitagraphoscope, A-C 

Cactus, The. See: Waifs and Strays. 

Caliph and the Cad, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Caliph, Cupid and the Clock, The. See: Four Million, 
The. 

Call Loan, A. See: Heart of the West. 

Call op the Tame, The. See: Strictly Business. 

Calloway's Code. See: Whirligigs. 

Cartoons by O. Henry. See: Rolling Stones. 

Case op Diana's Husband, The. Same as: Defeat of 

the City, The. 
Caught. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Central America, Stories op. See: Locality. 
Chair op Philanthromathematics, The. See: Gentle 

Grafter, The. 

Champion op the Weather, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Chaparral Christmas Gift, A. See: Whirligigs. 
Chaparral Prince, A. See: Heart of the West. 
"Cherchez La Femme." See: Roads of Destiny. 
Christmas by Injunction. See: Heart of the West. 
Church with an Overshot Wheel, The. See: Sixes 

and Sevens. 
City of Dreadpul Night, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Clarion Call, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Comedy in Rubber, A. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Coming-out op Maggie, The. See: Four Million, The. 
Complete Life op John Hopkins, The. See: Voice of 

the City, The. 

283 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Compliments of the Season. See: Strictly Business. 
Confessions of a Humourist. See: Waifs and Strays. 
Conscience in Art. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 
Cop and the Anthem, The. See: Four ^lillion. The. 
Cosmopolite in a Cafe, A. See: Four IViilhon, The. 
Count and the Wedding Guest, The. See: Trimmed 

Lamp, The. 
Country of Elusion, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
Cupid a La Carte. See: Heart of the West. 
Cupid's Exile Number Two. See: Cabbages and Kings. 



D 

Day Resurgent, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Day We Celebrate, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Defeat of the City, The. See: Voice of the City, The, 
Departmental Case, A. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Detective Detector, The. See: Waifs and Strays. 
Diamond of Kali, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Dicky. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Dinner at , A. See: Rolling Stones. 

Dinner for Two, A. Same as Madison Square Arabian 

Night, A. 
Discounters of Money, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Dog and the Playlet. See: W^aifs and Strays. 
Door of Unrest, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Double Deceiver, A. Dramatization of Double-Dyed 

Deceiver, A. 
Double-Dyed Deceiver, A. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Dougherty's Eye-Opener. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Dream, The. See: Rolling Stones. 
Duel, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Duplicity of Hargraves, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

284 



O. HENRY INDEX 

E 

East Side Tragedy, An: "The Guilty Party." See: 
Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Easter of the Soul, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 

Elsie in New York. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Emancipation of Billy, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 

Enchanted Kiss, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 

Enchanted Profile, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 

Ethics of Pig, The. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 

Exact Science of Matrimony, The. See: Gentle 
Grafter, The. 

Extradited from Bohemia. See: Voice of the City, The. 

F 

Fairy of Unfulfilment, The. Same as Ferry of Un- 
fulfilment. The. 

Ferry of Unfulfilment, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, 
The. 

Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled. See: Roll- 
ing Stones. 

Fifth Wheel, The. See: Strictly Business. 

Flag Paramount, The. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Fog in Santone, A. See: Rolling Stones. 

Fool-Killer, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 

Foreign Policy of Company 99, The. See: Trimmed 

Lamp, The. 
Four Million, The — Short Stories. 

contents: 

Tobin'sPalm The Skylight Room 

The Gift of the Magi A Service of Love 

A CosmopoUte in a Cafe The Coming-Out of Maggie 

Between Rounds Man About Town 

285 



O. HENRY INDEX 



The Cop and the Anthem 
An Adjustment of Nature 
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog 
The Love-Philtre of Ikey 

Schoenstein 
Mammon and the Archer < 
Springtime a la Carte 
The Green Door 
From the Cabby's Seat 
An Unfinished Story 



The Caliph, Cupid and the 

Clock 
Sisters of the Golden Circle 
The Romance of a Busy 

Broker 
After Twenty Years 
Lost on Dress Parade 
By Courier 
The Furnished Room 
The Brief Debut of 'Tildy 



Four Roses, The — Verse. See: Roses, Ruses, and Ro- 
mance in Voice of the City, The. 

Fourth in Salvador, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 

"Fox-iN-THE-MoRNiNG." See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Friendly Call, The. See: Rolling Stones. 

Friends in San Rosario. See: Roads of Destiny. 

From Each According to His Ability. See: Voice of 
the City, The. 

From the Cabby's Seat. See: Four ^Million, The. 

Furnished Room, The. See: Four Million, The. 

G 

Gentle Grafter, The (Illustrated) — Short Stories. 



contents: 



The Octopus Marooned 

JefiF ' Peters as a Personal 
Magnet 

Modern Rural Sports 

The Chair of Philanthro^ 
mathematics 

The Hand that Riles the 
World 

The Exact Science of Matri- 
mony 



A Midsummer Masquer- 
ade 
Shearing the Wolf 
Innocents of Broadway 
Conscience in Art 
The Man Higher Up 
A Tempered Wind 
Hostages to Momus 
The Ethics of Pig 



286 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Georgia's Ruling. See: WMrligigs. 

Ghost of a Chance, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Gift of the ]\L\gi, The. {To be dramatized). See: 
Four iVIillion, The. 

Gift of the Wise !Men, The. Same as Gift of the Magi, 

The. 
"Girl." See: \MiirHgigs. 

Girl and the Graft, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Girl and the Babit, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Gold that Glittered, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Goodwin, Frank. See: Note under Cabbages and Kings. 
Greater Coney, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Green Door, The. {Has been dramatized.) See: Four 

IVIillion, The. 
GuARDLAN" OF THE AccoLADE, The. See: Roads of Des- 

tmy. 
GuARDL\N OF THE 'ScuTCHEON. Same OS Guardian of 

the Accolade. 

"Guilty Party" — ^An East Side Tragedy, The. See: 
Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Guthrie Wooing, A. Same as Cupid a la Carte. 

H 

Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss, The. See: 

Roads of Destiny. 
Hand that Riles the World, The. See: Gentle Grafter, 

The. 
Handbook of Hyivien, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Harbinger, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Harleim Tragedy, A. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
He Also Serves. See: Options. 
Head-Hunter, The. See: Options. 
Heart of the West — Short Stories. 

287 



O. HENRY INDEX 

contents: 

Hearts and Crosses The Caballero's Way 

The Ransom of Mack The Sphinx Apple 

Telemachus, Friend The Missing Chord 

The Handbook of Hjinen A Call Loan 

The Pimienta Pancakes The Princess and the Puma 

Seats of the Haughty The Indian Summer of Dry 

Hgyeia at the Solito Valley Johnson 

An Afternoon Miracle Christmas by Injunction 

The Higher Abdication A Chaparral Prince 

Cupid a la Carte The Reformation of Calliope 

Hearts and Crosses. See: Heart of the West. 
Hearts and Hands. See: Waifs and Strays. 
Helping the Other Fellow. See: Rolling Stones. 
HiDLNG OF Black Bill, The. See: Options. 
Higher Abdication, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Higher Pragal\tism, The. See: Options. 
Him Who Waits, To. See: Options. 
Holding Up a Train. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Hostages to Momus. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 

How Gladys Hustled, or "Fickle Fortune." See: 

Rolling Stones. 
Hygeia at the Solito. See: Heart of the West. 
Hypotheses of Failltie, The. {Basis of a vaudeville 

sketch). /See; Whirligigs. 



"I Go TO Seek on IVIany Roads," — Verse — Heading 
OF Roads of Destiny. See: Roads of Destiny. 

Ikey Schoenstein, The 'Lovb Philtre of. See: Four 
MiUion, The. 

Indian Sumimer of Dry Valley Johnson, The. See: 
Heart of the West. 

Innocents of Broadway. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 

288 



O. HENRY INDEX 

J 

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet. See: Gentle 
Grafter, The. 

Jeff Peters Stories. 

See: The Gentle Grafter; Cupid a la Carte (In Heart of the West); 
and The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear {In Rolling Stones). 

JiMMiE Hayes and Muriel. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
JiivoiY Samson. English dramatic version of A Retrieved 
Reformation. 

John Hopkins, The Complete Life of. See: Voice of 
the City, The. 

John Tom Little Bear, The Atavism of. See: Rolling 

Stones. 
Johnny Atwood. See: Note under Cabbages and Kings. 

K 

Katy of Frogmore Flats. Saine as The Pendulum. 
Keogh and Clancy. See: Note under Cabbages and 
Kings. 



L 

Lady Higher Up, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Last Leaf, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Last of the Troubadours, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Law and Order. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

"Lazy Shepherds, See Your Lambkins" — David's 
Verse in Roads of Destiny. See: Roads of Destiny. 

Let Me Feel Your Pulse. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Also issued separately as a small illustrated book. This story is 
largely based upon O. Henry's own ill-fated search for health. 

289 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Letters from O. Henry. See: Rolling Stones. 

Two to Gilman Hall 

One to Mrs. Hall, a friend in North Carolina 

Three to Dr. W. P. BeaU 

Four to David Harrell 

Parable Letter 

Two to his Daughter Margaret 

To J. O. H. Cosgrave 

One to "Col. Griffith" 

Four to Al. Jennings 

Two to H. P. Steger 

(A few other letters are quoted, in whole or in part, in "Waifs 

and Strays.'*) 

LicKPENNY Lover, A. See: Voice of the City, The. 
"Little Speck in Garnered Fruit." See: Voice of the 

City, The. 
Little Talk About Mobs, A. See: Waifs and Strays. 

Little White ]\L^n of Morleys'. Same as Assessor of 
Success. 

Locality 

A geographical arrangement of practically all of the stories. Ref- 
erence to the book in which the tale app)ears is given after each 
title or group of titles. 

Central America 



The Head Hunter. {In Options) 

Phoebe 

The Fourth in Salvador 

Two Renegades 

The Day We Celebrate. {In Sixes and Sevens) 



In Roads of Destiny 



England 
Lord Oakhurst's Curse, {hi Rolling Stones) 

290 



0. HENRY INDEX 

France 



Roads of Destiny. 
Tracked to Doom. 



{In Roads of Destiny) , 
{In Rolling Stones) 



In The Gentle Grafter 



Mexico 
He Also Serves. {In Options) 

New York 

"The Four Million" (Whole volume) 

Innocents of Broadway 1 

A Tempered Wind J 

The Third Ingredient 

Schools and Schools 

Thimble, Thimble 

To Him Who Waits 

No Story 

The Higher Pragmatism 

Rus in Urbe 

The Discounters of Money 

The Halberdier of the Little Reinschloss 

The Enchanted Profile 

The Marionettes 

A Dinner at 



In Options 



In Roads of Destiny 



An Unfinished Christmas Story 

The Unprofitable Servant 

The Sleuths 

Witches' Loaves 

The Pride of the Cities 

Ulysses and the Dogman 

The Champion of the Weather 

Makes the Whole World Kin 

At Arms with Morpheus 

The Ghost of a Chance 

Let Me Feel Your Pulse 

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes 

The Lady Higher up 

The Greater Coney 

291 



In Rolling Stones 



- In Sixes and Sevens 



O. HENRY INDEX 



In Sixes and Sevens 



Transformation of Martin Bumey 

The Caliph and the Cad 

The Diamond of Kali 

** Strictly Business." (All the stories in this volume, except 

"A Municipal Report," for which see The South under 

Tennessee.) 
"The Trimmed Lamp." ("VMiole volume) 
"The Voice of the City." (Whole volume) 
Calloway's Code 
"Girl" ' 

The Marry Month of May 
Sociology' in Serge and Straw 
Suite Homes and Their Romance 
A Sacrifice Hit 
The Song and the Sergeant 
A Newsp>aper Story 
Tommy's Burglar 
A Little Local Colour 



In Whirligigs 



Pennsylvania (Pitishurgk) 
Conscience in Art. (In "VMiirligigs) 



South America 

"Cabbages and Kings." (Whole volume) 

The World and the Door 

The Theory' and the Hound 

A Matter of Mean Elevation 

Supply and Demand 

Next to Reading Matter 

A Double-Dyed Deceiver 

On Behalf of the Management 

A Ruler of Men 

Helping the Other Fellow 



In Options 



• In Roads of Destiny 

J 



In Rolling Stones 



The South — 

Alabama 
The Ransom of Red Chief. {In \Murligigs) 

292 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Georgia 

Hostages to Momus. (In The Gentle Grafter) 
*' The Rose of Dixie." (In Options) 

Kentucky 

A Blackjack Bargainer. (In "Whirligigs) 
Shearing the WoK 1 j r^^ ^ ^ (. ^ 
The Ethics of Pig J 



In Roads of Destiny 



Louisiana 

The Renaissance at Charleroi 
Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking 
Cherchez la Fenune 
Blind Man's Holiday. (In Whirligigs.) 

Tennessee 

A Midsummer Masquerade. (In The Gentle Grafter) 
October and June. (In Sixes and Sevens) 
The Whirligig of Life. (In Whirligigs) 

Virginia 
Best Seller. (In Options) 

Washington 

The Hand That Riles the World. (In The Gentle Grafter) 
A Snapshot at the President. (In Rolling Stones) 
The Duplicity of Hargraves. (In Sixes and Sevens) 

Indefinite 

The Emancipation of Billy 1 j^ ^^^^^ ^^ j^^^^.^^ 
The Guardian of the Accolade J 

The Church With an Overshot Wheel 1 j^ ^^^ ^^j ^^^ 
Ihe Door of Unrest J 

The West — 

Arizona 

Christmas by Injunction. (In Heart of the West) 
The Roads We Take. (In Whirligigs) 

293 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Arkansas 

JeflF Peters as a Personal Magnet 1 t rri /-• 1.1 /-. ». 
rru Tvr XI- u TT r ^^ ^^^ Gentle Grafter 

The Man Higher Up. J 

A Retrieved Reformation. {In Roads of Destiny) 

Colorado 

The Ransom of Mack. {In Heart of the West) 
The Friendly Call. {In Rolling Stones' 

Illinois 
The Exact Science of Matrimony. {In The Gentle Grafter) 

Indiana 
Modem Rural Sports. {In The Gentle Grafter) 

Indian Territory 

New York by Campfire Light. {In Sixes and Sevens) 
A Technical Error. {In WTiirligigs) 

Kansas 
The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear. {In Rolling Stones) 

Montana 
The Handbook of Hymen. {In Heart of the West) 

New Mexico 
Telemachus Friend. {In Heart of the West) 

Oklahoma 

Cupid a la Carte. {In Heart of the West) 
Holding Up a Train. {In Sixes and Sevens) 

Texas 

The Octopus Marooned. {In The Gentle Grafter) 
Hearts and Crosses 

The Pimienta Pancakes ^ __ , , ttt . 

Seata of the Haughty ' ^" ^^^ of the West 

Hygeia at the Solito 

294 



O. HENRY INDEX 



In Options 



An Afternoon Miracle 

The Higher Abdication 

The Caballero's Way 

The Sphinx Apple 

The Missing Chord 

A Call Loan 

The Princess and the Puma 

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson 

A Chaparral Prince 

The Reformation of Calliope 

The Hiding of Black Bill 

Buried Treasure 

The Moment of Victory 

A Poor Rule 

Art and the Bronco 

The Passing of Black Eagle 

Friends in San Rosario 

The Enchanted Kiss 

A Departmental Case 

The Lonesome Road 

The Marquis and Miss Sally 

A Fog in Santone 

Tictocq 

Aristocracy Versus Hash 

A Strange Story 

Fickle Fortune, or How Gladys Hustled 

An Apology 

Bexar Script No. 2692 

The Last of the Troubadours 

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel 

Law and Order 

One Dollar's Worth 

A Chaparral Christmas Gift 

Madame Bo-Peep of the Ranches 

Georgia's Ruling 



In Heart of the West 



In Roads of Destiny 



' In Rolling Stones 



In Sixes and Sevens 



In ^Vhirligigs 



Lonesome Road, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Lord Oakhurst's Curse. See: Rolling Stones. 

295 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Lost Blend, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
Lost on Dress Parade. See: Four Million, The. 
Lotus in the Bottle, The. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstein, The. See: Four 
IVIillion, The. 

M 

Mad.ajvie Bo-peep of the Ranches. See: Whirligigs. 
Madison Square Arabian Night, A. (A vaudeville 

sketch has been based on this.) See: Trimmed Lamp, 

The. 
jNLvKES the Whole World Kin. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
iNL^KiNG OF A New Yorker, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, 

The. 
Maaevion and the Archer. See: Four Million, The. 
Man About Town. See: Four MilUon, The. 
Man Higher Up, The. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 
Marionettes, The. See: Rolling Stones. 
Marquis and Miss Sally, The. See: Rolling Stones. 
Marry Month of IVL^y, The. See: ^Miirligigs. 
Martin Burney, Transformation of. See: Sixes and 

Sevens. 
]VL^.STERS OF Arts. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Matter of Mean Elevation, A. See: Whirligigs. 
Memento, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Memoirs of a Yellow Dog. See: Four Million, The. 
Midsummer Knight's Dream, A. See: Trimmed Lamp, 

The. 
Midsummer ]VLs.squerade, A. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 
Mignot, Unpublished Poems of David. See: Roads of 

Destiny, Chap. I. 
Miracle of Lava Canon. Reshaped as An Afternoon 

Miracle. 

296 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Mr. Valentine's New Profession. Same as Retrieved 
Reformation, A. 

Missing Chord, The. See: Heart of the West. 

Modern Rural Sports. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 

Moment of Victory, The. See: Options. 

Money Maze. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Municipal Report, A. See: Strictly Business. 

Mystery of the Rue De Peychaud, The, or Tracked 

to Doom. See: Rolling Stones. 



N 

Nemesis and the Candy Man. See: Voice of the City, 
The. 

New Manhattan Nights. Name of a series which in- 
cluded "What You Want?", Discounters of Money, 
and Enchanted Profile. 

New Orleans, Stories of. See: Under Locality, The 

South, Louisiana. 
New York by Campfire Light. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
New York, Stories of. See: Locality. 
Newspaper Story, A. See: Whirligigs. 
"Next to Reading Matter." See: Roads of Destiny. 
Night in New Arabia, A. See: Strictly Business. 
No Story. See: Options. 



O 

O. Henry, Poem by James Whitcomb Riley. See: 

Rolling Stones. 
October and June. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Octopus Marooned, The. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 
On Behalf of the Management. See: Roads of Destiny. 

297 



O. HENRY INDEX 

One Dollar's Worth. See: Whirligigs. 
"One Rose I Twined Within Yolti Hair." 

First line of Poem entitled, "The Four Roses" in Roses, Ruses, 
and Romance, a story in "The Voice of the City." 

One Thousand Dollars. (To be tlie basis of a play.) 
See: Voice of the City, The. 

Options — Short Stories. 

contents: 

"The Rose of Dixie. " . He Also Serves. 

The Third Ingredient. The Moment of Victory. 

The Hiding of Black Bill. The Head-Hunter. 

Schools and Schools. No Story. 

Thimble, Thimble. The Higher Pragmatism. 

Supply and Demand. Best Seller. 

Buried Treasure, Rus in Urbe. 

To Him \Mio Waits. A Poor Rule. 

Out of Nazareth. See: Waifs and Strays. 



Passing of Black Eagle, The. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Past One at Rooney's. (A vaudeville sketch has been 

based on this.) See: Strictly Business. 
Pendulum, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
Peters, Jeff. See: Jeff Peters. 

Philistine in Bohe]viia, A. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Phcebe. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Phonograph and the Graft, The. See: Cabbages and 

Kings. 
PiMiENTA Pancakes, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Plunkville Patriot, The. 

Humorous page in The Rolling Stone. For photographs of this 
page see Rolling Stones. 

298 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Plutonian Fire, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Poems by O. Henry. See: Rolling Stones. 

Titles: 

The Pewee. Vanity. 

Nothing to Say. The Lullaby Boy, 

The Murderer. Chanson de Boheme. 

Some Postscripts. Hard to Forget. 

Two Portraits. Drop a Tear in this Slot. 

A Contribution. Tamales. 

The Old Farm. 

Poet and the Peasant, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Poor Rule, A. See: Options. 

Porter Family, Record of Births and Deaths. See: 
Rolling Stones. 

Portraits of O. Henry at Various Ages. See: Rolling 
Stones. 

Pride of the Cities, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

Princess and the Puma, The. See: Heart of the 

West. 
Prisoner op Zembla, The. See: Rolling Stones. 

Proem, The: by the Carpenter. See: Cabbages and 

Kings. 
Proof of the Pudding. See: Strictly Business. 
Pseudonyms Used by O. Henry: Olivier Henry; S. H. 

Peters; James L. Bliss; T. B. Dowd; and Howard or 
* Harry Clark. 

Psyche and the Pskyscraper. See: Strictly Business. 
Purple Dress, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Q 

Queries and Answers. See: Rolling Stones. 

Quest of Soapy. Same as The Cop and the Anthem. 

£99 



O. HENRY INDEX 

R 

Raggles. Same as Making of a New Yorker, The. 

Ramble in Aphasia, A. See: Strictly Business. 

Ransom of Mack, The. See: Heart of the West. 

Ransom of Red Chief, The. (To be dramatized). See: 
WhirHgigs. 

Rathskeller and the Rose, The. See: Voice of the 
City, The. 

Red Roses of Tonia. See: Waifs and Strays. 
Reformation of Calliope, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Remnants of the Code, The. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Renaissance at Charleroi, The. See: Roads of Des- 
tiny. 

Reproductions of Manuscript and Pages from the 
Plunkville Patriot as Printed by O. Henry in 
The Rolling Stone. See: Rolling Stones. 

Retrieved Reform. Same as Retrieved Reformation, A. 

Retrieved Reformation, A. (Dramatized as "AHas 
Jimmy Valentine.'*) See: Roads of Destiny. 

Roads of Destiny — Short Stories. 



contents: 

Roads of Destiny (To be 

dramatized) 
The Guardian of the Accolade 
The Discounters of Money 
The Enchanted Profile 
"Next to Reading Matter" 
Art and the Bronco 
Phoebe 

A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
The Passing of Black Eagle 
A Retrieved Reformation 
Cherchez la Femme 
Friends in San Rosario 

300 



The Fourth in Salvador 
The Emancipation of Billy 
The Enchanted Kiss 
A Departmental Case 
The Renaissance at Charleroi 
On Behalf of the Manage- 
ment 
Whistling Dick's Christmas 

Stocking 
The Halberdier of the Little 

Rheinschloss 
Two Renegades 
The Lonesome Road 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Roads We Take, The. See: Whirligigs. 

Robe of Peace, The. See: Strictly Business. 

Rolling Stone, The — O. Henry's Newspaper Pub- 
lished IN Austin, Texas. 

Extracts: 

Tictocq 

Tracked to Doom, or The Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud 

A Snapshot at the President 

Aristocracy versus Hash 

The Prisoner of Zembla 

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled 

An Apology 

Bexar Script No. 2692 

Queries and Answers 

All of the above will be found in the volume entitled Rolling Stones 

Rolling Stones (illustrated)^ 

Stories and Sketches and Poems collected from various magazines, 
and from The Rolling Stone, O. Henry's Texas newspaper. 

contents: 
Introduction 
The Dream 
A Ruler of Men 

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear 
Helping the Other Fellow 
The Marionettes 
The Marquis and Miss Sally 
A Fog in Santone 
The Friendly CaU 

A Dinner at 

Sound and Fury — Dialogue 

Tictocq (from The Rolling Stone) 

Tracked to Doom, or the Mystery of the Rue de Peychaud (from 

The Rolling Stone) 
A Snapshot at the President (Editorial in The Rolling Stone) 

301 



O. HENRY INDEX 

An Unfinished Christmas Story 

The Unprofitable Servant — Unfinished 

Aristocracy versus Hash (from The Rolling Stone) 

The Prisoner of Zembla (from The Rolling Stone) 

A Strange Story (from The Rolling Stone) 

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled (from The Rolling Stone) 

An Apology (from The Rolling Stone) 

Lord Oakhurst's Curse (sent in a letter to Dr. Beall, Greensboro, 

N. C, in 1883) 
Bexar Scrip No. 2692 (from The Rolling Stone) 
Queries and Answers (from The Rolling Stone) 



Poems: 



The Pewee 
Nothing to Say 
The Murderer 
Some Postscripts 
A Contribution 
The Old Farm 



Vanity 

The Lullaby Boy 

Chanson de Boheme 

Hard to Forget 
Drop a Tear in this Slot 
Tamales 



Some Letters 



Letters 



Romance of a Busy Broker, The. See: Four Million, 

The. 
"Rose of Dixie, The." See: Options. 
Roses, Ruses, and Romance. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Rouge et Noir. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Round the Circle. See: Waifs and Strays. 
RuBAiYAT OF A ScoTCH HiGHBALL, The. See: Trimmed 

Lamp, The. 
Rubber Plant's Story, The. See: Waifs and Strays. 
Ruler of Men, A. See: Rolling Stones. 
Rus IN Urbe. See: Options. 

302 



O. HENRY INDEX 



Sacrifice Hit, A. See: Whirligigs. 

Schools and Schools. See: Options. 

Seats of the Haughty. See: Heart of the West. 

Service of Love, A. See: Four MiUion, The. 

Shaivirock and the Palm, The. See: Cabbages and 
Kings. 

Shamrock Jolnes. 

A cliaracter occurring in The Sleuths and also in The Adventures 
of Shamrock Jolnes. See: Sixes and Sevens 

Shearing the Wolf. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 

Ships. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Shocks of Doom, The. See: Voice of the City, The. 

Shoes. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Sisters of the Golden Circle. See: Four Million, The. 

Sixes and Sevens — Short Stories. 

contents: 

The Last of the Troubadours October and June 

The Sleuths The Church with an Overshot 

Witches' Loaves Wheel 

The Pride of the Cities New York by Campfire Light 

Holding Up a Train The Adventures of Shamrock 

Ulysses and the Dogman Jolnes 

The Champion of the Weather The Lady Higher Up 

Makes the WTiole World Kin The Greater Coney 

At Arms with Morpheus Law and Order 

The Ghost of a Chance Transformation of Martin 

Jimmie Hayes and Muriel Bumey 

The Door of Unrest The Caliph and the Cad 

The Duplicity of Hargraves The Diamond of Kali 

Let Me Feel Your Pulse The Day We Celebrate 

Skylight Room, The. See: Four Million, The. 
Sleuths, The. See: Sixes and Sevens. 

303 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Smith. See: Cabbages and Kings. 

Snapshot at the President, A. See: Rolling Stones. 

Snow Man, The. See: Waifs and Strays. 

SocL\L Triangle, The. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 

Sociology in Serge and STRA\y. See: ^Miirligigs. 

Song and the Sergeant, The. See: WTiirligigs. 

Sound and Fury — Dialogue. See: Rolling Stones. 

South America, Stories of. See: Locality. 

South, Stories of the. See: Locality. 

Sparrows in !^Lu)IsoN Square, The. See: Waifs and 

Strays. 
Sphinx Apple, The. See: Heart of the West. 
Springtime a La Carte . See: Four ^lillion, The. 
Squaring the Circle. See: Voice of the City, The. 
Steger, H. p. 

O. Henry's personal friend who edited Rolling Stones and wrote 
the introduction to the last collection of his works. See: Rolling 
Stones. 

Stickn^ey's Necktie. Same as Unfinished Christmas 
Story. 

Strange Story, A. See: Rolling Stones. 

Strictly Business — Short Stories. 

contents: 

Strictly Business A Municipal Rep)ort 

The Gold That Glittered Psyche and the Psky scraper 

Babes in the Jungle A Bird of Bagdad 

The Day Resurgent Compliments of the Sea- 
The Fifth Wheel son 

The Poet and the Peasant A Night in New Arabia 

The Robe of Peace The Girl and the Habit 

The Girl and the Graft Proof of the Pudding 

The Call of the Tame Past One at Rooney's 

The Unknown Quantity The Venturers 

The Thing's the Play The Duel 

A Ramble in Aphasia "What You Want" 

304 



O. HENRY INDEX 

Successful Political Intrigue, A. See: Tictocq in 

Rolling Stones. 
Suite Homes and Their Romance. See: Whirligigs. 
Supply and Demand. See: Options. 



Tainted Tenner, The Tale of a. See: Trimmed 

Lamp, The. 
Technical Error, A. See: WTiirligigs. 
Telemachus, Friend. See: Heart of the West. 
Tempered Wind, A. See: Gentle Grafter, The. 
Texas, Stories of. See: Locality, Stories of the West. 
Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen, Two. See: Trimmed 

Lamp, The. 
Theory and the Hound, The. See: Whirligigs. 
Thimble, Thimble. See: Options. 
Thing's the Play, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Third Ingredient, The. (Has been dramatized.) See: 

Options. 
Tictocq. 

Two French Detective Stories 
A Successful Political Intrigue 
Tracked to Doom 
See: Rolling Stones 

To Him Who Waits. See: Options. 

Tobin's Palm. See: Four MiUion, The. 

Tommy's Burglar. See: WTiirligigs. 

Tracked to Doom, or the Mystery of the Rue De 
Peychaud. See: Rolling Stones. 

Transformation of Martin Burney, The. See: Sixes 

and Sevens. 
Transients in Arcadia. See: Voice of the City, The. 

Trimmed Lamp, The — Short Stories, 

305 



O. HENRY INDEX 



contents: 



The Trimmed Lamp 

A Madison Square Arabian 
Night 

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch 
HighbaU ' 

The Pendulum 

Two Thanksgiving Day Gen- 
tlemen 

The Assessor of Success 

The Buyer from Cactus 
City 

The Badge of Policeman 
O'Roon 

Brickdust Row 

The Making of a New Yorker 

Vanity and Some Sables 

The Social Triangle 



The Purple Dress 

The Foreign Policy of Com- 
pany 99 

The Lost Blend 

A Harlem Tragedy 

*'The GuUty Party"— An 
East Side Tragedy 

According to Their Lights 

A • Midsummer Knight's 
Dream 

The Last Leaf 

The Count and the Wedding 
Guest 

The Country of Elusion 

The Ferry of Unf ulfilment 

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner 

Elsie in New York 



Two Recalls. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Two Renegades. See: Roads of Destiny. 
Two Thanksgring Day Gentle^ien. See: Trimmed 
Lamp, The. 

U 

Ulysses and the Dogman. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
Unfinished Christmas Story, An. See: Rolling Stones. 
Unfinished Story, An. See: Four Million, The. 
Unknown Quantity, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Unprofitable Servant, The. See: Rolling Stones. 



Vanity and Some Sables. See: Trimmed Lamp, The. 
Venturers, The. See: Strictly Business. 
Vitagraphoscope, The. See: Cabbages and Kings. 
Voice of the City, The — Short Stories. 

306 



O. HENRY INDEX 



contents: 



The Voice of the City 

The Complete Life of John 

Hopkins 
A Lickpenny Lover 
Dougherty's Eye-Opener 
** Little Speck in Garnered 

Fruit" 
The Harbinger 
While the Auto Waits 
A Comedy in Rubber 
One Thousand Dollars 
The Defeat of the City 
The Shocks of Doom 
The Plutonian Fire 



Nemesis and the Candy Man 
Squaring the Circle 
Roses, Ruses, and Romance 
The City of Dreadful Night 
The Easter of the Soul 
The Fool-KiUer 
Transients in Arcadia 
The Rathskeller and the Rose 
The Clarion Call 
Extradited from Bohemia 
A Philistine in Bohemia 
From Each According to His 

Ability 
The Memento 



w 

Waifs and Strays — Short Stories, and Critical and 
Biographical Miscellany. 



contents: 
Paut I — Twelve Stories 



The Red Roses of Tonia 

Round the Circle 

The Rubber Plant's Story 

Out of Nazareth 

A Little Talk about Mobs 

Confessions of a Humourist 



The Sparrows in Madison Square 

Hearts and Hands 

The Cactus 

The Detective Detector 

The Dog and the Playlet 

The Snow Man 



Part II — Criticcd and Biographical Comment 

Little Pictures of O. Henry, by Arthiu- W. Page 
The Knight in Disguise, by Nicholas Vachel Lindsay 
The Amazing Genius of O. Henry, by Stephen Leacock 
O. Henry — ^an English View, by A. St. John Adcock 
The Misadventures in Musical Comedy of O. Henry and Franklin 
P. Adams 

307 



O. HENRY INDEX 

O. Henry in his Own Bagdad, by George Jean Nathan 

O. Henry — Apothecary, by Christopher Morley 

O. Henry, by WiUiam Lyon Phelps 

About New York with O. Henry, by Arthur B. Maurice 

O. Henry and New Orleans, by Caroline F. Richardson 

**A Yankee Maupassant" — a Summary of the Early Criticism 

O. Henry's Short Stories, by Henry James Forman 

The O. Henry Index 

West, Stories of the. See: Locality. 

"What You Want." See: Strictlv Business. 

«/ 

Where to Dine Well. See: A Dinner at in Rolling 

Stones. 

While the Auto Waits. See: Voice of the City, The. 

Whirligig of Life, The. See: "NMiirligigs. 

Whirligigs — Short Stories. 

contents: 

The World and the Door A Sacrifice Hit 

The Theory and the Hound The Roads We Take 

The Hypotheses of Failure A Blackjack Bargainer 

Calloway's Code The Song and the Sergeant 

A Matter of Mean Elevation One Dollar's Worth 

"Girl" A Newspaper Story 

Sociology in Serge and Straw Tommy's Burglar 

The Ransom of Red Chief A Chaparral Christmas Gift 

The Marry Month of May A Little Local Colour 

A Technical Error Georgia's Ruling 

Suite Homes and their Ro- Blind Man's Holiday 

mance Madame Bo-Peep of the 
The "Whirligig of Life Ranches 

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking. See: Roads of 

Destiny. 
Witches' Loaves. See: Sixes and Sevens. 
World and the Door, The. (Has been dramatized.) 

See: WTiirligigs. 

308 




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